Posted on March 31, 2012 by Amy Kuras

Future Professionals Program Lets Girl Shine

(This post was contributed by Latitia McCree, vice president of arts, youth development, and community initiatives for the YMCA of Metro Detroit).

In the 9^th grade Sparkle barely went to school. She skipped classes so she could hang out with her friends who just wanted to have fun. She needed an escape from her urban soap opera, and thought parties and socializing would bring her joy. Her home life was completely unmoored, moving from one family member or friend’s house to the next. As she describes herself, “I was truly immature and irresponsible…I had major family issues.”

Like many urban teens, she was not getting along with her mother and was living in an environment surrounded by sex, drugs and alcohol. In short, she was surrounded by a generation who were intoxicating themselves to mask their pain and feelings of hopelessness.

One day while hanging out with her friends, she really took a look at their lives and realized she wanted more. “I did not feel comfortable with myself anymore. I was seeing people whose lives were much worse than mine; I knew I wanted to go to school and to make something of myself.”

Sparkle really did not know how to even begin her life again. But as the old adage goes, when the student is ready the teacher will come.

The YMCA sent out a mass mailing inviting Detroit teens to join the YMCA Future Professionals. Sparkle got the letter and immediately called the Y. Over the past nearly three years Sparkle has truly sparkled at the Y. She has attended numerous college tours, conducted a host of community service projects, attended dozens of career and college prep workshops and built relationships with caring adults. She secured her first job with YMCA assistance. Today Sparkle is a senior at the Detroit International Academy for Young Women. She has a cumulative GPA of 3.5. She aspires to be a clinical psychologist, has been accepted into several universities and has been awarded the Bowling Green Success Scholarship.

The YMCA Future Professionals program is a part of a 30 year old YMCA movement commonly called Minority Achievers. The primary focus is to connect urban youth with working professionals to challenge and support their matriculation and graduation from high school and pursuit of post-secondary degree attainment, in the hope that these young people become working professionals and productive citizens in their communities.

On May 22 at noon, at the Boll Family YMCA, the Y will be celebrating high school seniors who, like Sparkle have overcome an array of obstacles but will be going to college in the fall of 2012. In addition, we will be inducting new Adult Achievers or volunteers to challenge and coach other youth involved with the YMCA to ensure their success.

The YMCA would like 30 or more companies to support Y Achiever’s work by making a commitment to nominate an employee to volunteer and nurture our youth and by making a financial gift of $2012, in commemoration of 2012 being the 32 Achiever’s Celebration.

Posted on March 23, 2012 by Amy Kuras

Creativity Aids Strong Kids Campaign

Sure, if you need people to contribute to your cause you can just ask them for money. But it’s so much more fun to have them shake it at Zumba, attend a special exercise class, or vote for their favorite aquatics instructor!

That’s what’s happening at the South Oakland YMCA. Staff there have come up with all kinds of interesting ways to generate contributions to the Strong Kids Campaign. Group exercise coordinator and instructor Melanie Sevald has brought in several hundred dollars for the campaign through her classes. In November, they did a Thanksgiving Day workout very early in the morning, and donated the fees from participants to the campaign. Similar bonus classes during the breaks between sessions raised money and also allowed their very loyal class members to continue their workouts between sessions.

Melanie says she thinks it’s important to support the Strong Kids Campaign because it’s part of why the Y is special. “It’s what makes us different from everybody else,” she says. “We never turn anyone away. We want to make sure everyone has the means to fully participate here.”

Earlier in March, they capitalized on the Zumba craze by throwing a Zumba party for the whole community, not just Y members, to benefit the Strong Kids Campaign. Currently, members can vote fot their favorite aquatics instructor by putting a $10 pledge to Strong Kids in the bucket on a table outside the pool with their favorite instructor’s name, and also get a chance to win four free swim lessons.

While these fundraisers are fun and light-hearted, they serve a very serious purpose. Thanks to the Strong Kids Campaign, kids, seniors and families have a chance to be part of a welcoming community. Whether it’s a mom freed from the worry of finding safe and quality care for her children in the summer because they were able to attend day camp, or a senior citizen who has found friends and renewed vigor in a Healthy Older Adults class, the Strong Kids Campaign allows the Y to continue making a difference in people’s lives.

Posted on March 14, 2012 by Amy Kuras

Y Sees Family Through Tough Time

Imagine being a healthy, active dad of three young children — and suddenly, you can’t even walk, much less play with your kids or exercise.

That’s what happened to Don Nurkala, who serves on the board of the Carls Family YMCA in Milford. He’d always been active and was on a hockey team which played Friday nights. One night in January 2010, he took a slap shot off the foot, but didn’t think anything of it. The next morning he woke up and his right hand was essentially unusable. “I could move it but I didn’t have a lot of strength,” he says. “It just felt weird — I’ve always played sports and have done everything I could think of to my body, and I’d never felt that before.”

Soon, his calf cramped up –”on a pain scale of 1-10 it was a nine,” he says — and by the next day the pain had moved over to his left leg and he could hardly walk at all.

He had a couple of important meetings the next day, and so he got through those and then went to see his primary care doctor. His doctor was concerned enough that he called a neurologist friend and had Don seen right away. The neurologist sent him to the hospital immediately, where a battery of tests found a spot on his neck that possibly indicated a rare virus.

Still struggling, he did everything his doctors asked but wasn’t feeling any better. It was a difficult time for him and for his family — he couldn’t care for his kids or do household chores, and this was someone for whom a 10-mile run was part of his easy routine just days before this illness struck. “The neighbors thought I was crazy because I would sit on the driveway and try to throw a ball to the kids, and I could barely do that,” he says. “The strength that I lost was such that I didn’t have the strength to cut my own fingernails or to push down on a soap pump. Doing little things fatigued me like crazy.”

The Y provided his family comfort, fun and a sense of community, he says. Not only were people simply showing concern for his health, but his trainer was giving him stretching advice to keep his limbs as loose as possible, and his children were in swimming lessons, soccer and basketball, getting the exercise and play Don wished he could help with. His wife ended up taking on almost all the child care and household responsibilities because his illness was leaving him so weak and fatigued, and ChildWatch allowed her to work out and have a little time to herself while knowing her kids were in a safe, caring environment. “It was huge blessing to know they were there for all that,” he said.

Finally, after several months of this his doctor decided to do an MRI of his spine, which revealed several lesions. Don has multiple sclerosis. It’s the relapsing-remitting kind, which means he’s essentially guaranteed it will relapse, it’s just a matter of how long that might take. It could be a few years, it could be a decade — but Don intends to meet it head on.

“I have to do as much as I possibly can now so when the relapse does come again, I have that much easier of a time recovering from it,” he says.

To that end he’s in the Triathlon Club at the Y and recently completed a half-mile swim. His plan is to complete a half-Ironman Triathlon this year and a full Ironman next year. “I hope I can inspire my kids to do things, and anyone else at the Y who might have MS can see me and know it’s not the end,” he says.

Posted on March 8, 2012 by Amy Kuras

Artist Finds Community at Y

In nearly a century of life, Pablo Davis has built a career as a painter, sculptor and activist. He worked with Diego Rivera on the “Detroit Industry” mural at the Detroit Institute of Arts, created an assisted living center for seniors in Southwest Detroit, and currently has a piece “Descent From the Cross” on display at the Scarab Club in Detroit’s Cultural Center.

He’s a remarkable person, and while his sight has faded and his hands have grown shaky, his artistic spirit has never dimmed.

He began coming to the North Oakland Y with his caregiver, Jean Wharton, some years ago, working out on the machines three times a week. “I’m a believer in activity, in ‘get up and do it’,” he says. As his sight began to fail, he developed vertigo, and his arthritis has progressed he struggled to continue his workouts, and that’s where Vernell Herd stepped in.

Vernell is a personal trainer at the Y and noticed the Pablo needed some help with his exercise. He asked to help him, and designed a workout Pablo could do in his wheelchair. He’s now walking the length of the upstairs hall at the Y with assistance.

The two men have become good friends in the time they have been working together. “I am in a place where I am able to give back,” Vernell says. “I’m being taught some history…while I am teaching him, he is teaching me.” He also considers his work with Pablo just another example of Y values. “I just invoke the Golden Rule ,” he says. “I look at it as how I would want to be treated when I get older.”

Vernell is just one Pablo’s many friends at the Y…he has a community of older men he visits with frequently, drinking coffee and discussing current events.

Jean says that Vernell lifts Pablo’s spirits as well as helping him strengthen physically. And she appreciates the Y’s affordability, so that they both can enjoy it. “This facility has been an emotional and physical Godsend” she says.

Posted on March 6, 2012 by Amy Kuras

Exercise Instructor Goes from Wheelchair to Water

Anyone who has spent some time at the South Oakland YMCA has more than likely seen Pam running water exercise classes. But many people may not know the story of how the Y has affected her life.

Pam has a degenerative bone disease that had her relying on a wheelchair to get around. In 2006, two weeks before she was due to have surgery that would restore her ability to walk, her husband lost his job and with it the insurance that would have covered the procedure. Everything was canceled, and Pam was left to figure out how to attempt to get some mobility back on her own.

She thought swimming would likely help, so she and her husband came to the South Oakland Y in 2006. Since neither she nor her husband were working, they needed financial assistance to join, which the Y was able to provide them.

Thanks to her own determination and hard work, and some pushing from aquatics director DeShawn Wallace, Pam went from using the chair lift to get into the pool to swimming the length of it. Eventually, she was asked to volunteer as a teacher for some of the water exercise classes, and now is part of the Y staff, helping other people who are facing the same kind of challenges she overcame.

Most remarkably, she can walk on her own, which she attributes mostly to her exercise at the Y. People come to her classes with all kinds of physical challenges, and she can serve as inspiration and example to them, she says.

With a degree in nuclear medicine, Pam could likely be making more money working elsewhere, but the Y is a special place and she wants to be part of it, she says. “It’s where I am supposed to be,” she says. “Once you realize what you are doing makes you happy, that’s what you should do.”

Posted on March 4, 2012 by Amy Kuras

MY-Y Starts Path to a Bright Future

Imagine the biggest interview of your life — a make it or break it moment — and you don’t have a way to get there. That’s what faced Brittany Morris, a leader in several programs at the Metro Youth YMCA (MY-Y) and a senior at the Detroit International Academy for Young Women in Detroit.

Brittany was always determined to go to college, but wasn’t sure exactly how to pay for it or what school might be the best option. She got great guidance from several people at the Y, but Terry Mial, director of outreach at the YMCA of Metropolitan Detroit, really took Brittany under her wing. “She had smarts going for her, so I started working with her and put her in our leadership program,” she says.

Terri’s daughter attends Bowling Green State University in Ohio, so when Brittany started thinking about where to apply Terri encouraged her to go there because of their excellent scholarship programs and their mentoring for students from less affluent backgrounds.

Brittany was selected for an interview for their President’s Scholarship, but had no way to make the four-hour drive to campus. Terri asked her daughter, Tara, to come home for the weekend and take Brittany back with her in time for the interview.

That was in February 2011….and February in Michigan means unpredictable weather. Sure enough, on the night before her interview it started to snow, and did not let up. Brittany despaired of missing her interview and her chance at the scholarship, but Terri swung into action. “I called the school and told them everything,” she says. “I pleaded with them to let her interview by phone.” They agreed, and Brittany nailed the interview and got the scholarship. She’s now in her freshman year at Bowling Green.

When Tara Mial, Terri’s daughter finally did make her way back to school after that snowstorm, she got in an accident on the way back that totaled her car. She was unhurt, but the highway patrolman told her if someone had been sitting in the passenger seat — where Brittany would have been sitting had she gone with Tera — they would have been killed.

In yet another coincidence, because of the transportation problem the two young women never actually met. Last semester, Brittany wanted some writing help with an assignment so she signed up for a tutor at the campus writing center. She saw a Tara Mial on the list of instructors, and hoping it was Terri’s daughter, chose her as her tutor.

It was indeed, and Tara, a senior, has become a mentor for Brittany, showing her around the campus and introducing her to organizations she might want to join.

Brittany sums up her relationship with her Y mentors this way: “I was like their little daughter.” Terri still checks up on her every few weeks and sends her encouraging texts. Before leaving for school, she had the opportunity to speak to Y donors who had funded a scholarship she received. She promised she would not let them down — and she’s already made them proud.

Y COMMUNITY IMPACT

Monthly Archives: March 2012

Y Sees Family Through Tough Time

Artist Finds Community at Y

Exercise Instructor Goes from Wheelchair to Water

MY-Y Starts Path to a Bright Future