Scuba Diving Belongs to Everyone

Underwater, gravity lets go. Diveheart has spent 25 years using that simple fact to teach people with disabilities to scuba dive — and training the instructors and dive buddies who make it possible. Buddy is proud to support their mission and to help divers book with the shops that teach it.

WHO IS DIVEHEART

Diveheart is a nonprofit that teaches people with disabilities to scuba dive — and proves disability doesn't define potential.

Jim Elliott founded Diveheart in 2001 in Downers Grove, Illinois, after years guiding blind skiers. Their mission is simple: build confidence, independence, and self-esteem in children, adults, and veterans with disabilities through scuba therapy and adaptive training.

Twenty-five years on, the Diveheart curriculum is taught in more than 200 cities, and the organisation has helped launch over 50 adaptive scuba nonprofits around the world.

WHERE TO TRAIN

Diveheart businesses you can book on Buddy.

Diveheart writes the training. These operators deliver it — and they take their bookings through Buddy. Whether you want to dive, or want to be the buddy in the water beside someone who does, this is where you start.

Just Breathe Adaptive

Provo, Utah

A 501(c)(3) running the Diveheart curriculum in Utah County, with a strong focus on children and youth with disabilities and on the travel side of adaptive diving.

· Adaptive diver certification
· Adaptive dive buddy training
· Free community Try Scuba days
· Accessible dive trips

Your Dive Concierge

Key Largo, Florida

A PADI operation teaching the full Diveheart ladder from adaptive diver through instructor, alongside recreational and professional PADI courses.

· Diveheart Adaptive Diver
· Adaptive Dive Buddy
· Advanced Adaptive Dive Buddy
· Adaptive Scuba Instructor

ZERO GRAVITY AND THE ADVENTURE PARADIGM

If you can scuba dive, you can do anything.

That is Diveheart's vision, in their words. Using zero gravity and what they call the adventure paradigm, they instill a can-do spirit in participants — and inspire them to take on challenges they might not have considered before.

Zero gravity

Diveheart describe the water column as the forgiving, weightless environment of outer space — giving perfect buoyancy and balance to anyone who might otherwise struggle on land.

Confidence, independence, self-esteem

Their mission, stated plainly: to build confidence, independence and self-esteem in the lives of children, adults and veterans with disabilities through scuba diving and scuba therapy.

Imagine the Possibilities

Their tagline, and the point of the whole thing. As founder Jim Elliott puts it, it is not really about scuba diving — it is about what people believe is possible afterwards.

HOW TO SUPPORT THEM

Buddy supports Diveheart.

Diveheart is volunteer-driven and donation-funded. One adaptive diver certification costs around $1,200, and every adaptive diver needs at least two trained dive buddies in the water with them. Donations are what keep divers diving.

THEIR BIG PROJECT

The Deep Pool Project

Diveheart is raising funds for the world's deepest warm-water therapy pool — 130 feet, in a three-pool research and education facility north of Chicago. Deep enough to reproduce open-water diving without weather, current, or cold, year round.

FOR DIVERS

Download the Buddy dive log app.

FOR SUPPORTERS

Help Diveheart get divers in the water.

For Water Operators

Run your dive business on Buddy.

List your activities, manage bookings, and grow your customer base — all from one platform built by divers, for divers.

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