Summaya Mughal provided an inspirational talk about BROWN GAL CAN'T SWIM on Saturday 24 June at the RLSS UK Conference 2023.

Summaya Mughal

Summaya Mughal is an award-winning TV and Radio Presenter for the BBC featuring on local radio for BBC Leicester. Recently Summaya took on the personal challenge of learning to swim in just eight weeks, with her journey being documented on a BBC podcast, Brown Gal Can’t Swim.

During the podcast, Summaya explores the barriers that South Asian women face which mean they are less likely to learn how to swim, and she aims to break down these barriers and encourage members of the South Asian community to learn to swim.

Summaya works with Olympians Rebecca Adlington and Alice Dearing during the five-part series in a bid to complete her challenge of swimming 500m in open water at the end of the eight weeks.

Documenting her journey Summaya looks at the reasons she never learnt to swim, her family's relationship and experience with swimming, as well as exploring barriers her own friends faced when heading to the pool.

Summaya hopes to provide inspiration to people from all backgrounds to learn how to swim, enjoy the water, and potentially save lives.

Looking ahead to the future, Summaya has big plans to develop her swimming and lifesaving skills further and plans to work with RLSS UK to achieve those goals on a number of projects. She also wants to encourage as many people from diverse backgrounds to engage in swimming and lifesaving to help with RLSS UK’s aims of working towards the goal of educating everyone to enjoy water safely.

Check out Summaya's podcast

Click here for more information about other speakers at the RLSS UK Conference 2023