A Brazilian swimming school has come under fire for its shockingly insensitive ad for children’s swimming lessons.
Swim school FitFlex Aquacenter put an ad in a local paper to encourage parents to sign their children up for lessons, using an image of drowned toddler Aylan Kurdi to illustrate their bizarre message.
The newspaper ad has sparked outrage.
The three-year-old toddler died by drowning when trying to leave Syria for Greece on a boat with relatives. The image of his body lying face down on a Turkish beach quickly became a symbol of the gravity of the refugee crisis.
Alongside the image in the ad, is the following caption in Portugese:
“Nine months to be born, three years to grow and two minutes to be alone and drown in a minute.”
“Swimming isn’t a luxury. It’s a necessity for children’s development and security.”
The ad caused outrage, with many taking to Facebook to express their shock and distaste.
Marketing student Gael Do Val, one of hundreds of outraged Facebook users wrote: “It makes total sense. If your child learns to swim at this academy he will be such a brilliant f##king student that he will able to cross the sea at night in winter.”
Joao Marcelo Guizzo, added: “Whoever came up with this ad hasn’t got any feelings.”
However, Academy director Vinicius Maciel confirmed last night the swim school was behind the ad and added that he was surprised at the criticism.
In a statement, the school explained:
“At the end of February, following the tragic death from drowning of a child near to the academy, we decided to do something to highlight this problem which is when we published this notice in a local paper.
“We were trying to show that children don’t only die in wars and that children close to us can accidentally die from drowning.
“In Brazil the second cause of accidental child deaths is drowning and yet we speak very little about this problem. Every four days a child drowns in our country.
“We are aware this ad went viral because of the negative reaction to it.
“We did something to alert people to a problem and made a mistake but at least we did something.
“We ask others who are also in a position to do something, to divulge ways in which lives can be saved in our cities.
“At no time did we intend to disrespect anyone and as soon as we received the negative feedback, we withdrew the photo from the ad.”
