Rubio was translated by Lucy Thames, a volunteer with Carolina Swim Clinic.

“It’s important because it’s not just teaching my children how to swim, it’s teaching them to have confidence in themselves,” Rubio said.

Julia Lopez has two children who are taking swim lessons, and she agreed that Carolina Swim Clinic has helped her children to have more confidence. She said they are always excited to go to their swim lessons on Sundays.

Lopez was also translated by Thames.

“The clinic has been a lot of help. My daughter was 11 and it always made her afraid to try and swim, and here she learned," Lopez said. "Now she’s on her high school swim team. She asks her teacher here whenever she wants to learn new moves for the team, and so it’s helped her out a lot in school to be able to take swim classes here."

While their children are learning to swim, parents have the option to receive free English tutoring as well. The English lessons came about because of feedback from the families, and they’ve been very popular.

“We realized we have an hour that our parents are just sitting on the sidelines while we're teaching their kids, and we can be more productive with this hour and we can do something with it,” Ochs said. “So we asked and a lot of them were interested in English lessons.”

Rubio and Lopez are both taking these English lessons. Lopez said she appreciates all the time the volunteers take out of their week to provide these free lessons to her and her children.

As the families left the last English lesson of the semester, the classroom was filled with hugs and a few misty eyes from both the students and the volunteers.

“It’s really important to each one of us who come to take classes for English or for swimming,” Lopez said.

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