Madhavan hails 17-year-old kid from London who took on a project that delivered free swimming lessons to poverty-stricken children. Who is Jeremiah Carnegie?

He is just 17, but he has managed to train nearly 800 children to swim, that too free of cost! Actor Madhavan recently praised Jeremiah Carnegie, a 17-year-old competitive swimmer from Croydon, who led a community-led aquatics programme at the London Aquatics Centre in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. This programme successfully trained 780 local kids in swimming. This happened after the youngster, who has competed in various national swimming competitions since he was eight, noticed that many kids did not have access to swimming lessons. He wanted to remove the financial barriers and teach the kids a life-saving skill.

How Did Carnegie’s Pet Project Come To Be?

According to South London News, Carnegie had regularly used the Crystal Palace National Sports Centre for training, but repeated structural shutdowns and prolonged repair work at the historic facility made access to its 50-metre pool increasingly difficult.

Seeking a reliable venue to continue high-level preparation, Carnegie became a member of the Newham and UEL Swimming Club (NUEL), whose main training base is the London Aquatics Centre in Stratford. During early-morning practice sessions and regional competitions there, he began noticing a striking contrast: despite the centre being situated in Newham, one of London’s most culturally varied and economically diverse boroughs, local residents were rarely visible in the pool during elite and club training hours.


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Reports by local sports journalists covering youth-focused initiatives in East London highlighted similar concerns. Carnegie reportedly became aware that although the state-of-the-art complex regularly staged major national competitions, many people living nearby struggled to access its facilities because of financial constraints as well as cultural and social barriers.

Concerned about the limited involvement of the surrounding community, Carnegie turned his attention to swimming accessibility. With drowning hazards disproportionately affecting young people from some ethnic minority communities and disadvantaged households across Greater London, he began speaking with NUEL coaches and facility administrators about ways to reduce these barriers and encourage greater participation among local children and families.

The project used funds obtained from municipal grants to provide organised, free aquatic education with the goals of increasing water safety awareness, reducing drowning risks, and increasing historically under-represented populations' access to top-notch sports facilities.

To bring the project to life, Carnegie joined hands with NUEL executives to draft grant proposals. The Mayor of London's Sport Unlocked programme, which aims to use historic sporting venues for grassroots community access, provided the majority of the funding. Local municipal health boards and regional sports charities contributed additional microgrants to pay for professional coaching fees, insurance, and pool space rental. Goggles, swim caps, and buoyancy aids were among the gear that was bought and given away for free. In order to ensure that complete non-swimmers could develop baseline confidence within a multi-week modular course, the program placed a higher priority on basic water safety, technical stroke mechanics, and emergency survival procedures than on rigorous competition training.