Ljubljana, April 11th 2026
More than 200 swimming coaches, trainers, teachers and club staff filled the main lecture hall of the Faculty of Sport in Ljubljana on Saturday 11 April for the SWIMSAFE regional workshop, organised by the Slovenian Swimming Federation (Plavalna zveza Slovenije) under the leadership of dr. Dorica Šajber. It was the project’s largest single training event to date, and a turnout that already carries SWIMSAFE past its target of engaging at least 150 participants across Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia.
The one-day seminar was designed for the people who take swimmers into open water in practice: club coaches, instructors, and teachers running school swimming programmes. Where the project’s earlier train-the-trainer course built a core group of qualified educators, this workshop was about reach — putting the SWIMSAFE framework in front of as many practitioners as possible, in their own language, with time to ask questions.
A programme built around real decisions
The day opened with an introduction from dr. Šajber, followed by Vincenc Lotos Šparovec on the human body in the sea — how cold, currents and distance from shore change what a competent pool swimmer can actually do.
Psychologist Tina Jeromen addressed fear of deep water, a factor coaches meet constantly but rarely have language for, and then joined lawyer Barbara Pia Hrovat for a session on ensuring safety and a safe sporting environment, covering both the duty of care coaches carry and the practical steps that protect participants. An extended block for questions and discussion followed — deliberately built into the schedule rather than squeezed in at the end, so that practitioners could raise the situations they actually face.
The afternoon turned practical. Alen Kramar presented safety in open water swimming, and Miha Koren covered swimming in outdoor school programmes (šola v naravi), where teachers are often responsible for large groups of children in natural water. dr. Dorica Šajber and Maja Virant closed the seminar, which finished with an hour of practical exercises in the pool.
A seminar of this size is, in itself, one of the project’s most effective dissemination tools. Guidelines and online modules matter, but knowledge travels furthest through the people who teach — and each of the 200-plus coaches, instructors and teachers who spent the day in Ljubljana returns to a club, a school or a training group where that knowledge is put to use. What was delivered in one lecture hall on a Saturday morning will reach several thousand swimmers across the region in the season ahead. That multiplier is precisely what SWIMSAFE was built to achieve.
