Błażej Pruski started his diving adventure in 1978, when, as a teenager, he attended his first diving course. Despite the problems with access to equipment and limited possibilities of foreign trips in communist Poland at that time, he developed his passion with full determination. After many years, he had many excellent achievements in finding and exploring the wrecks of the Baltic Sea as well as popularizing modern diving techniques in Poland at that time (including the use of nitrox, trimix or semi-closed circuit units). He also became an educator of many generations of instructors at all levels of advancement, which made him the main Instructor Trainer of one of the largest diving organizations in Poland.
Tymoteusz Furmanek, who started his diving adventure in 1988, became a professional diver and dive instructor up to the Course Director level. Using his professional experience gained while working for the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a safety expert, he created, together with Błażej, a system for educating diving instructors, which was based on modern pedagogical and psychological knowledge about human behaviour and learning processes.
One of the graduates of the above mentioned instructor training courses was Sebastian Dobrowolski, who has been diving since 1998 and is professionally associated with the Fire Brigade, an avid speleologist, cave diver and technical diver. He was interested in popularization of cave diving and creation of a systematic system of training for participants of cave exploratory expeditions.
All three of them met at the Hańcza Lake at Jarosław Bekier’s dive center – he is an experienced instructor running a large, successful dive center, has a great knowledge of the diving business, its weaknesses, perspectives and real needs.
During the following days, thoughts were confronted on the existing training programs, different training agencies and type of support provided to their instructors, organizational structures and quality management issues. As a result of this meeting they decided to establish the IDF – an experience-based, modern training platform that responds to the problems and challenges faced by the diving industry during these changing times. Its most important mission will be safe management – according to the credo – Safety First!
Today, IDF is a dynamically developing training agency, whose instructors are present in dozens of countries on all continents, certificates are respected all over the world. In recognition of the quality of the created training offer, cooperation with IDF is being established by successive rescue and military services of particular countries. Civilians associate IDF with the care for the topicality of training programs and attractiveness of training materials, which we are still improving for you.
See you underwater!