False Bay Surf Lifesaving Club has been actively patrolling Muizenberg Beach, Cape Town and preventing drowning for over 50 years. Established in 1959, we are a registered non-profit voluntary organisation focussed on training lifeguards from our community using international lifesaving benchmark standards to watch over beachgoers and make sure the general public is safe while enjoying their time at the beach. To this point, we have adopted the global lifesaving motto of “vigilance and service” in our everyday operations.
Traditionally, the Club’s reputation has always allowed it to enjoy a steady and constant growth in membership, but in past years, the number of members had declined to the extent that it threatened the very existence of the club, with a bare minimum of only two lifeguards on patrol duty. This spurred a core group of invested lifeguard-members to reimagine the Club’s purpose, brand and impact on the community.
The young committee set to formalising the structure of the club, changing the Constitution for registration as one of the first lifesaving clubs to be run as a Non-Profit Organisation, along with Public Benefit Organisation Status for tax deductible donations from corporate sponsors.
This brought about a change in our Club’s culture to a more family-orientated and proud spirit which gave the lifeguards a sense of ownership around their roles and obligations toward the club and what it means to be a voluntary lifeguard. This allowed us to grow internally, providing the platform for growth and expansion into the community, and brought about positive inspiring faces at the Club. Ultimately the work the new committee put in to re-energise the Club and new member recruitment led to the development of False Bay Surf Lifesaving Club’s incredible brand and what it really means to be a “Bayan” lifeguard.
To date our three voluntary lifesaving duty squads boast 50 lifeguards per summer season, a total of 2000+ duty hours (averaging 60 hours per lifeguard), and twenty serious surf rescues per summer, with no drownings occurring while on patrol.
We also have a strong competitive lifesaving arm, where racing is aimed at harnessing the response times of lifeguards in rescue-simulation type events. The False Bay High Performance Lifesaving Team achieved 5th place at the World Lifesaving Championships held in The Netherlands in September 2016, along with some of our members winning their events and claiming World Champion Titles, and giving the Club some international exposure. Recently our Men’s Open Beach Relay Team won the 2017 Cape Metro District Sports Team of the Year, and went on to win the 2017 Western Cape Sports Team of the Year. They were nominated for the 2017 SA Sports Team of the Year.This brought about a change in our Club’s culture to a more family-orientated and proud spirit which gave the lifeguards a sense of ownership around their roles and obligations toward the club and what it means to be a voluntary lifeguard. This allowed us to grow internally, providing the platform for growth and expansion into the community, and brought about positive inspiring faces at the Club. Ultimately the work the new committee put in to re-energise the Club and new member recruitment led to the development of False Bay Surf Lifesaving Club’s incredible brand and what it really means to be a “Bayan” lifeguard. Online exposure of our positive ethos has accelerated our brand awareness and involvement within the community, which in turn has led to our content-rich website (www.fbslc.org.za) to be the most visited lifesaving website (by monthly users) in the country along with our interactive resources; our Facebook Page being one of most visited lifesaving media platforms in the country.
Our Nipper’s programme - aimed at young (u/14) lifeguards in training who learn about ocean safety in a safe and fun environment, while also training for lifesaving competition – has recently also shown immense growth.
The quality of our lifeguard training programme has led to many international employment channels for our lifeguards and built relationships with waterparks and summer camps around the world who directly employ the lifeguards who’ve come through the community involvement programmes.
Through education, recruitment and training, we want to remain a leading lifesaving club offering world-class lifesaving training, all in aid of boasting a drown-free beach.