The YMCA Essay

PEOPLE come first, are treated with dignity and respect, and are encouraged to achieve their full potential;

Girl Scouts is a program and community for young girls. The Girl, in Girl Scouts, stands for Go-getter, Innovative, Risk-taker, Leader™. I believe in all of these things. I think Girl Scouts is a great opportunity for girls to become confident with themselves, learn to be kind and selfless and learn to be a leader. I have been a Girl Scout for a long time now, and am working on my silver award. I feel that all girls should have the ability to be a Girl Scout and learn how to make the world a better place.

Keelan Simpson is the Sports Coordinator of the Bloomington YMCA and his main responsibilities consist of running all sports programs at the YMCA, hiring the correct employees/staff to coach or help run the different sports programs. The different sports programs include youth summer camps, youth seasonal sports, and adult basketball leagues. The YMCA is a global organization that serves all individuals of a community, allowing them to have access to recreational sports, fitness programs and many other health opportunities.

THE Y’S mission statement is to put Christian principles into practice through programs that build healthy spirit, mind, and body for all. At the Y, strengthening community is our cause. We believe that positive, lasting personal and social change can only come about when we all work together to invest in our kids, our health, and our neighbors. (Tampa Metropolitan Area YMCA, 2013)

Every student must have an equal opportunity to free, fair, equitable, and rigorous education. As educators we must strive to provide students with the best education we possibly can as teachers, community members, administration and policy makers. In order to provide equitable education all learners must be taken into consideration when designing curriculum, lessons, courses and school structure.

According to Miller and Dess, mission statements are the driving motivation of an organization (1996). The mission statement of the Boys & Girls Clubs Indianapolis (BGCI) is, “Boys & Girls Clubs of Indianapolis believes every young person deserves to live a life filled with hope and opportunity. Because we care about our young people, we provide a safe, educational and positive atmosphere where they can prosper and reach their full potential”. This mission statement does a great job of embodying what BGCI represents and hopes to provide for its members. The mission statement is not something that is unattainable; it is a very well attainable and is a very possible mission. For someone who has never part took in the BGC, it makes them very eager to want to volunteer or have their kids or family members join. Research shows that having a strong mission statement is the first step to overall keeping a firm survival in an organization or business (Miller and Dess, 1996). Theory and practice have helped prove that

The Young Men's Christian Association ("YMCA" or in the USA "the Y") is a worldwide movement of more than 45 million members from 124 national federations affiliated through the World Alliance of YMCAs. Founded on June 6, 1844 in London, England by George Williams, the goal of the organization was putting Christian principles into practice, achieved by developing "a healthy spirit, mind, and body." The YMCA is a federated organization made up of local and national organizations in voluntary association. Today, YMCAs are open to all, regardless of faith, social class, age, or gender. The World Alliance of YMCAs is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland.

Today, the YMCA is a non-denominational organization that is still inspired and guided by positive moral values.

Currently, for adults, the YMCA offers courses on various activities like cycling or yoga. In the past, the YMCA offered courses one would typically find at a local community college. One example of this was with an African-American YMCA according to Campbell Johnson (Johnson 358). This YMCA recognized that many of its members could find higher paying jobs if they had more training. As a result, the YMCA began offering a course in building maintenance. This is also a prime example of the YMCA responding to a specific need of the community it is located in. Now that community colleges are more affordable the YMCA does not offer courses similar to ones that are at higher education institutions. The YMCA currently meets the needs of the community by offering health education classes and activities. The health education classes typically feature a trained staff member educating attendees on things like healthy food choices or simple exercises one can do throughout a busy work day. The YMCA’s educational programs tend to always promote their core values that shape a positive spirit while helping meet the educational needs of its members. These programs can help with health education or character

In the business world, each year is different from the other, same goes for the academic division. It is a fact that people come and people go for all types of reasons. Change is forever arising, sometimes for the better or worse. Within the middle school athletics level there are 13 Athletic Directors (AD) positions and 160 or more coaching positions, dependent on each teams’ participation. AD’s and coaches are paid employees of the district. The AD’s supervise the coaches at their individual school buildings or act as a sports liaison within their assigned school. The coaches simply coach. Many of our coaches have experience in the sport they are coaching, but sometimes we need a “warm body” or parent/volunteer to coach a team. In the area of Athletics you are always asked to work or volunteer more than you get paid. In most cases if you put in 40 hours weeks then you are paid for 40 hours. In athletics you may put in 40 hours and are only compensated 15 hours. The middle school AD position is part-time and pays 10-12 hours per week. So you can imagine the high turnover rate for AD’s. Coaches are paid based on their experience in the sport they are coaching. The coaches is pay is a percentage of the teacher’s contract. It can range from 3-5% of $37,600 and the teacher’s contract varies from year to year. The Athletics Department made a direct observation and diagnosed several problems identified above which were the high turnover

The local non-profit organization "Partners Mentoring Youth" welcomed its first AmeriCorps Vista member on Monday, February 22nd. "Partners Mentoring Youth's" mission is to create and support one-to-one mentoring relationships between positive adult role models and youth facing challenges in their personal, social and academic lives, here in Greeley. Year in and year out the non-profit helps to lower rates of juvenile delinquency, increase the self-esteem and self-confidence, and decrease the intent to use drugs throughout its youth community.

I know some things about the ymca like they have been serving the community for over 130 years. The person that first founded the ymca was george williams back in england in 1844. I like what the ymca does and how it does things for the community. Like the sports they have to offer and the fun event they have also they staff is always so nice and helpful and like that.

What is the YMCA? The Y is made up of all ages from every walk of life working side by side to strengthen communities. The YMCA’s motto is that they work to insure everyone, regardless of gender, income, faith, sexual orientation, or cultural background, has the opportunity to live life to its fullest. They share the values of caring, honesty, respect, and responsibility. In this paper you will learn a lot about the YMCA’s history, its founder, and some of the activities.

The youth engagement program has a multitude of resources within their program including, events or support for participants, partnerships, and grants. The many events open to students within the program are, restorative practices, reading/writing/math support, SAT prep, writing workshops, campus engagement events, FAFSA workshops, college/career conversations, career connecting, and post-secondary application support. In regards to partnerships held by the program, their main partner comes from a subcontract with the NSO along with, individuals and organizations with expertise in different programming elements (social workers, counselors, mentors, and those in trauma care), and mutually beneficial partnerships such as university-community relationships. Lastly, the programs grants include; $10,000 from united way for restorative practice training and $10,000 from ford for reading and writing tutoring.

The organization that I picked was the Northwest Youth Corps. There are two social problems that this organization tries to combat. The first problem is the lack of youth’s receiving valuable work experience leading to a deficiency for those youths later in life. The second social problem they see is a lack of conservation effort by people, and a lack of respect for the environment. I learned this in part from a friend that was/is in the program currently, I also used their website to confirm and research further.1