Dive Kulture

Designed for at-risk and proven-risk, inner-city teens and young adults, Dive Kulture offers scuba diving certification together with environmental education and placement in jobs in the environmental industry.

The program offers therapeutic outreach and long-term aftercare services to youth and their families by trained clinicians. Scuba diving is an activity very few inner-city youth are able to try.

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Scuba diving requires a great deal of equipment and access to water. For youth who live in violent, poverty stricken neighborhoods it can be an alternate, safe world to explore. Like highly successful programs in golf, tennis and equestrian therapy, it can break down color barriers and generate powerful and prestigious role models.

Scuba diving itself can be therapeutic. Divers must regulate their breathing, which causes the body to relax. An underwater environment is soothing to all of us, including those with emotional or behavioral disorders. A sense of accomplishment and self-esteem is part and parcel with getting certified.

After additional, often cross-cultural training in environmental education, the program offers career launching opportunities in fields ranging from marine conservation to the preservation of coast lands and the rapidly growing area of energy substitution. The 'green jobs' sector is exploding, and with it more opportunity for the youth who are participating in this health promoting and fun endeavor.

Results: Dive Kulture began with a pilot group of twelve teens at the Boys and Girls Clubs of Chelsea and Dorchester in April 2008. From the 12 teenagers who started, 9 finished and are now certified scuba divers, and 100% were placed during the summer to work in the environmental and aquatics fields. Two of the teens who worked as Assistant Marine Educators at Save the Harbor/Save the Bay were selected for an article in the Dorchester Argus-Citizen on August 28, 2008. One of the participants is going with the Marines in September 2009, and he will be enrolled to study Nuclear Chemistry. He is currently attending the Advanced Chemistry After school program at UMass, Boston, and graduating from High School in June 2009. They are all still in touch with the program staff.

The Future: Future groups will include a more intense therapeutic component to give children and adolescents with emotional and behavioral issues the opportunity to enjoy scuba diving too. For example, for kids with Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) who have difficulties concentrating and staying still. The water is not an environment where you can move very fast, and you need to breath in a rhythmic way. This makes the water a very relaxing environment for children and adolescents to learn self soothing and self regulating skills. This is just an example of the potential therapeutic use of an activity such as scuba diving with the appropriate professionals involved.

Recreational diving is not a new idea, but the combination of therapy, vocational training, environmental education, continuous evaluation and the ongoing support of participants, makes Dive Kulture unique in the USA.