Who owns ymcas

At the Y, we strengthen communities by connecting people to their potential, purpose and each other. In 10, communities across the country, we have the presence and partnerships to not just promise, but to deliver positive change. The YMCA is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to put Christian principles into practice through programs that build healthy spirit, mind and body for all.

Guided by our core values of caring, honesty, respect and responsibility, the Y is dedicated to giving people of all ages, backgrounds and walks of life the opportunity to reach their full potential with dignity. We envision a future in which all people achieve health, gain confidence, make connections and feel secure at every stage of life. Everyone deserves the opportunity to reach their full potential. From early learning to job training, the Y offers programs and services that support people at every stage of life to strengthen communities across the U.

Founded in London in , the Y has grown into one of the largest organizations focused on strengthening communities in the U. A Springfield College student, George Goss, wrote the first American book on lifesaving in as a thesis. The first mobile swimming pool was invented at the Eastern Union NJ Y in , enabling the Y to take instruction and swimming programs to people who could not go to the Y.

A group of 20 national agencies, the Council was organized to expand cooperation in the field of aquatics. Even the military used YMCA swim instruction techniques. In World War I, the Army used mass land drills to teach doughboys.

In , Dr. Thomas K. He also developed the exercise classes that led to today's fitness workouts. Group child care was not started at a YMCA, but Ys moved swiftly to meet the needs of a changed and changing society.

Today's YMCA movement is the largest not-for-profit provider of child care, and is larger than any for-profit chain in the country. No one could have predicted that in the beginning. The origins of group child care are obscure and we will probably never know who had the first group care program.

A strong possibility, however, is that group care grew out of gang prevention and teen intervention programs in the s. The Chicago YMCA had a strong youth outreach program in the s Ys had been working with youth gangs in one way or another since the s.

Workers noticed, however, that youths attending the program often brought their younger siblings along because they were providing care while their parents worked. Child care was organized so that the older kids could attend these programs without concern or distraction. Root had returned from a trip to the Soviet Union, where he had observed firsthand the extensive child care programs offered by the government and how the availability of child care benefited both children and their families.

The idea quickly spread to other cities. In the s, about half a million children received care at a YMCA each year. In , child care became the movement's second largest source of revenue, after membership dues. These solutions then spread throughout our society because they met the needs of others.

Often YMCAs set themselves up as models long before others even knew there was a problem. Many of the practices of colleges and universities in America, in fact, several colleges and universities themselves, can be traced back to YMCA involvement in higher education.

Ys in the 19th and early 20th centuries placed much more emphasis on formal and informal classes and teaching than they do now. This stemmed in part from the fact that free public education was not so widespread as it is today.

That meant that there were large numbers of working teens who needed classes and instruction if they were to avoid the traps and pitfalls that George Williams so keenly observed in London decades earlier.

YMCA classes and instruction also stemmed from the need for properly trained staff to run local Ys and carry on its programs. Previously, academic training for YMCA employees was mostly summer institutes and training sessions, the first being held in at Lake Geneva, Wis. These were insufficient, though, and at least since there had been calls for Ys in large metropolitan areas to set up training schools. The idea that large metropolitan associations should have classrooms for teen education and staff training was put into practice in San Francisco and Boston in the s and s.

The school added additional subject areas and became Northeastern College in Later expansion led to its becoming Northeastern University in The Evening Institute of the Boston YMCA was also the birthplace of student work study, a concept familiar to students receiving financial aid at almost every college or university in the country.

Many YMCAs had cooperative agreements with some of the most prestigious institutions of higher learning in America, many starting in the s and s. It closed in , with many of its programs going to the Blue Ridge Assembly. The YMCA movement played a large role in the development of higher education. By , there were approximately 83, students taking more than YMCA courses.

In , approximately , students were taking courses through Ys. Beginning in the s, as the colleges became freestanding institutions of higher learning and not just training centers for YMCA staff, it made sense for them to break free of the YMCA movement altogether. University retain close ties with the movement.

Students, of course, must have been active in informal YMCA bodies before then. Student Ys offered counseling and services to students on an ecumenical basis, an approach that heavily influenced and ultimately changed the way church and college staff conducted their own campus outreach programs.

Student work was so important to the movement that in , the movement authorized the organization of a national student council, complete with its own statement of purpose. Certification of staff with respect to general training is a YMCA development, growing out of the need for education that led to establishing YMCA schools in the 19th century. In , a plan for voluntary certification to be a YMCA secretary today's director was drawn up.

YMCAs were also among the first to develop systems of certification for staff in teaching programs. In part, this can be traced to the publication by Association Press of manuals and materials for use by staff in teaching courses.

In a national plan was developed for certifying aquatic directors and instructors. In , certification was offered in skin and scuba diving. In , more than 54, people were certified in various subjects or as trainers of trainers. The first official steps to organizing the fund began in Prior to that, churches and welfare organizations, if they made any provision for the future at all, had widows and orphans plans.

The Y's retirement plan was a first for any major welfare organization and probably the first for any such nonchurch association. Rockefeller Jr. The initial retirement age was The fact that YMCAs organized one of the earliest retirement funds should be seen in perspective.

YMCA staff had worked in other ways to improve working conditions. YMCAs had been active in labor's campaigns to shorten the work week since The Nobel Peace Prize awarded for pioneering work in peace making was jointly awarded in to John R. Mott's award was in recognition for the role the YMCA had played in increasing global understanding and for its humanitarian efforts.

Mott himself was a product of the student YMCA movement and he was a major influence on the Y's missionary movement. Staying in a YMCA room has been mentioned in song and literature, and the list of people who stayed at Y residences range from Dave Thomas, the founder of Wendy's restaurants, to Charlie Rich, the country music star and black revolutionary Malcolm Little, later known as Malcolm X.

Dormitories were seen as giving young men a place of refuge from the evils of the world. Intended for young men who could not afford more ample accommodations, it was, in the words of Dwight L. Moody, to be a Christian home for the stranger young men coming to this city. Farwell Hall burned down shortly thereafter. In the meantime, though, several YMCAs maintained emergency dormitories for the unemployed. The Harrisburg Pa. YMCA opened a Y dormitory in in a renovated hotel.

No hotel chain had more rooms. The influence of YMCAs on others extends far beyond individuals in their programs. Here are some organizations that drew on YMCA experience or assistance during their formative years.

Gulick was already well known for his work in the YMCA, his understanding of the whole person leading to his design of the YMCA's inverted triangle, one side each for spirit, mind and body. Busy with his existing commitments, Gulick did not want to take on the task of forming another organization. He did, however, advise others on the organization of the Thetford Girls, the forerunner of the Camp Fire Girls.

She saw them as forming an upright triangle, which she pictured superimposed over the Y's symbol to make a star. After Lord S. Ties to the YMCA continued for some time after These Scout Master's Training Schools continued for some years. In , on the occasion of their 75th anniversary, a plaque first given in was rededicated at Silver Bay by the Boy Scouts of America, in honor of its role in founding of Scouting in the United States.

These organizations, like the YMCA, had long histories of helping servicemen and noncombatants in the nation's wars, but the scale of mobilization needed as America prepared for World War II was far beyond the scope of any one organization. The only way to deal effectively with the needs of the hundreds of thousands of young men being drafted was to combine and coordinate efforts.

In settling a dispute between which areas of the USO's activities would be controlled by the military and which by the civilians, Roosevelt ordered that the private organizations would handle the recreation services and the government would put up the buildings and put the USO name on the outside. The volunteers pledged themselves to overseas missionary work after graduation from college.

The YMCA was given the opportunity to organize the Corps, but turned it down due to the burden of its other activities. Association Press, first established in as the YMCA Press, was created as the publishing arm of the YMCA movement, producing technical works, Bible study courses and other works suitable for building character and leadership skills, and was a pioneer in publishing books on sex education.

It was also the leading publisher of evangelistic materials used by YMCAs, including the popular everyday life series of devotionals written by Harry Emerson Fosdick between and The name Association Press was given in , and it was closed and sold in the late s after many years of declining book sales.

The Paris Press does in fact have a U. YMCA connection. It was started in Prague in by Julius Hecker, a World Service Worker, who wanted to publish works in Russian for those fleeing the revolution and the civil war. Since many books didn't fit in with Communist ideology, they couldn't be printed under Communist rule.

Hecker's efforts helped the refugees sustain their culture and community in the face of great upheaval. YMCAs have interpreted their Christian mission in a practical way, including in their programs and outreach missions many groups excluded by others at the time. Cavalry and the Sioux Indians. The Dakota Indian associations were formally received into the state organization in By there were 10 Indian associations with a total of members. The student department's interest in Indian work was fueled by James A.

Garvie's presentation to the convention of Garvie, a Sioux, had translated the model college constitution of a student Y into the Sioux language. Prior to that, however, the Kansas state association had engaged a native Indian missionary to work among his own people.

In Indian efforts were overseen by the student department. The Chinese were subjected to violent racism at this time, as witnessed by the Chinese Exclusion Act of The secretaries of these Chinese Ys were natives of China who converted to Christianity.

In , William Hunton became the first full-time black secretary in the YMCA movement, and in , the first conference of black secretaries was held. By , there were black Ys with 28, members.

The effect of these Rosenwald Ys was keenly felt in the s and '60s: YMCAs, being integral parts of the black community, played important roles in the struggle for civil rights. YMCAs and Y leaders also played important roles in the fight for civil rights. Eugene E. While YMCAs provided proud firsts on racial matters in the 19th and early 20th centuries, they also provided some sad lasts later on. In the s, some YMCAs were still racially segregated, and a few left the movement rather than comply with the national organization's directive to integrate.

The YMCA also had a role in the creation of modern black historigraphy. Carter G. Woodson, Ph. During that era, formal and informal segregation limited blacks to only certain areas of the city. As a result, the Wabash Area Y became a major institution in serving the black neighborhood known as Bronzeville.

It was there that Dr. Woodson and three friends met in to found the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. The men felt that if whites learned more about blacks, race relations would improve. The association, and Dr. Woodson's later scholarship, were important vehicles in establishing the study of African American history as an accepted academic pursuit at all major colleges and universities.

Woodson was also a practical man in addition to being a scholar: he knew that demonstrating the talents and accomplishments of blacks in America would help increase white regard for blacks. In the s it grew into Black History Month and is now celebrated throughout the country. Now the neighborhood is improving and the building is on the National Register of Historic Places. This is based on a statement by one observer in that Brooklyn had had women as members for half of its existence.

There were several female members, at least unofficially, by the s. The Albany NY convention of went so far as to refuse to seat several women delegates, holding that representation at the convention had to be based on male membership. Ellen Brown, who was not only the first female employee of a YMCA, but also the first boy's work secretary in the movement, was hired in By , women accounted for 12 percent of the membership.

This is not to say that women were not active in YMCAs before the s. Almost immediately after the founding of the YMCA in the United States in , women taught classes, raised funds and functioned as a ladies aid society would in a church. These committees of women were largely informal, and official Ladies Auxiliaries were not formed until the s. There is record of lady members using YMCA gyms in George Stuart, founder of the Philadelphia YMCA and head of the Y's efforts in the Civil War, said that there is a good deal of religion in a warm shirt and a good beefsteak.

YMCAs, to meet the needs of those in the armed forces, responded with care, imagination and skill. Here is an overview of the YMCA and the military. YMCAs have always sought out young men to assist, and the fact that men went into the military simply meant that the YMCA followed them there.

What does this actually mean? A large part of this Y-scholarship assistance was granted for child care services. When you join the YMCA you are joining a world-wide movement that has been established here locally to better our community.

You will be part of a social organization that is trying to make our community a better place to live. Your monthly fees and joiner fee are not going to shareholders. They are not going to some owner that lives out of state. Your membership fees are supporting a local charitable organization that makes our community better everyday. The YMCA is an organization that constantly changes to meet the needs of the community. Without members we simply could not exist.

If you a are civic minded individual, you can support the YMCA further by joining a YMCA committee meets once a month , volunteer to help with our annual campaign each year in March , volunteer to help with a program that interests you, make a donation to the Annual Campaign once a year we do a direct solicitation campaign to raise money to cover the costs for Y-scholarships , etc.

If you chose not to be involved further, you should still feel good about your membership in the YMCA. Your membership helps us tremendously by helping to fund the work we do each day to fulfill our Mission. It is one of the largest community service organizations in the U.