On 2nd of August 2018 we completed 20 years of our existence as the Rashtriya Life Saving Society (India). During these years, we as a team have dedicated our time and effort to inculcate safety consciousness in the community and train as many people as possible in skills to help a person in distress. To date we have trained over 300,000 lifesavers.

Despite being a populous country, losing almost half a million lives every year to accidents on land and in water hurts us for they are from our workforce, in the age group of 15 to 50 years, who matter most to our country. Training Lifesavers among them will continue to be our objective so that accident victims receive timely help. Training a lifesaver in every home remains our mission and a distant dream. It is a fitting occasion to reiterate our pledge to create a huge bank of lifesavers in our country so that no matter where or when an accident victim falls on land or in trouble in water, there is effective intervention to save a life.

I am acutely aware that we would not have reached where we have without the help and support of ILS, SLSA, RLSS (Commonwealth) and RLSS (Australia). Allow me, therefore, to express our gratitude to our mentors as we progress towards becoming the Centre of Excellence for Safety Awareness and Training in India leading RLSS (I) to launch India’s 1st Safety Literacy Mission this year.