Diving With a Purpose (DWP) is an American non-profit organization aimed at locating and documenting shipwrecks, predominantly those related to the Atlantic slave trade.^[1][2][3][4]

Diving With a Purpose was founded in 2005 by Kenneth Stewart (born 1944/45),^[5] a retired copier repairman^[6] with the Tennessee Aquatic Project and the National Association of Black Scuba Divers, and Brenda Lanzendorf (1958–2008),^[7] a maritime archaeologist at Biscayne National Park.^[2] They met during the filming of the 2004 documentary The Guerrero Project, a film chronicling efforts to locate the wreck of Spanish slave ship Guerrero, which are still ongoing,^[1] although a likely candidate has since been discovered.^[8][9]

DWP was featured in 2020 television documentary series Enslaved, featuring DWP member Kramer Wimberley,^[10] starring and produced by Samuel L. Jackson.^[11] It is also the subject of a 2021 documentary titled Lessons from the Water: Diving with a Purpose by filmmaker Charles Todd.^[12]

Roughly 300 divers have participated in Diving With a Purpose's maritime archaeology program since its foundation. The program includes one week of training and requires some prior experience,^[1][13] with the stated aim of training divers to become "able to assist in the historical documentation and preservation of artifacts and wreck sites".^[14] An offshoot program directed at a younger audience entitled Youth Diving With a Purpose (YDWP) was introduced in 2011.^[1][15]

The group has been involved with the discovery or documentation of numerous^{[lower-alpha 1]} shipwrecks, including the São José Paquete Africa^[17][18] and the Clotilda.^[1][19] Other activities of the organization have included the location and mapping of plane wrecks related to the Tuskegee Airmen in the Great Lakes.^[20][21] A memorial site in Port Huron, Michigan, was constructed in 2021.^[22][23]

Diving With a Purpose has worked or is working with groups and federal agencies including NOAA,^[24] the National Park Service (NPS),^[25][26] the Society of Black Archaeologists,^[27][28] and the Slave Wrecks Project, a collaboration between DWP, the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture, the NPS, George Washington University, Iziko South African Museum, and the South African Heritage Resources Agency.^[29]