Monthly Archives: July 2012

Posted on by

Olympic Swimmer Has Roots at Y

Tonight, the Olympics kick off in all their thrilling, inspiring glory. It’s been a long path filled with hard work and dedication for each athlete competing. And one, swimmer and three-time gold medalist Peter Vanderkaay, started out as a kid on a Y team in Rochester.

From ages 7 to 13, Peter competed at the Y, including at the Y state meet. He progressed through his swimming career, swimming for the University of Michigan and going to the 2004 and 2008 Olympics, where he won a gold medal in the 4x200m freestyle in Athens in 2004 and the gold medal in the 4x200m freestyle and the 200m freestyle in Beijing.

Now, he’s reaching back to help kids who have never had the chance to swim learn how. He’s been involved with the Detroit Swims Initiative from the start. “It has always broke my heart when I read about kids drowning because of lack of swimming proficiency skills,” he says. “Everyone should know how to swim.  You don’t have to be a competitive swimmer to enjoy the water, especially in Michigan.  In my mind, it should be a basic skill that can enrich everyone’s life.”

Detroit Swims Initiative aims to teach all Detroit kids to swim by fifth grade. That’s a big goal; there are 120,000 kids in that age group in the city. With our city bordering a river and so many lakes, ponds and pools everywhere, basic water survival skills are critical to keeping kids safe.

Vanderkaay’s family (two brothers are also swimmers) have created a T-shirt supporting Peter that people can wear during the Olympics. Sales benefit the Detroit Swim Initiative.

Peter hopes to show kids that competitive swimming builds confidence and is fun, whether they’re swimming in a small club meet or on the biggest stage in the world for swimmers, like he is about to do for the third time. “My story can show them that I started off just like everyone else; slowly rising to the top,” he says. “All it takes is a dream and a personal commitment to achieve it. ”

Best of luck to Peter in London!

Posted on by

Shopping Days to Benefit Swim Program

Who wouldn’t love the chance to browse the kind of high end retail Detroit has not seen for years, all while enjoying a beautiful summer weekend? And the best part? It all benefits the Detroit Swims program of the Boll Family YMCA.

Shoppers at CityLoft and Downtown Detroit Days will enjoy all that and more this weekend. The two events are sponsored by the Somerset Collection.

Last summer, Somerset brought mini versions of several of their high end retailers to downtown Detroit for a few weeks in the summer. This year, they have expanded it to three weekends, as well as inviting independent retailers from all over the Metro area to set up shop street-fair style in an adjacent lot. For each weekend event, they choose a local cause to partner with; this month, that’s the Detroit SWIMS program.

“The folks at Somerset Collection have been fantastic, and generous, in putting this program together,” says Boll Family YMCA director John Harris. “We are very excited and humbled to be involved.”

Shops are open 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Thursday, July 26 through Saturday, July 28 at 1261 Woodward, north of the Kern’s Clock.

Detroit Swims is an initiative of the YMCA to ensure 120,000 children in Detroit have YMCA swim lessons before fifth grade. A swim lesson plan developed by YMCA lifeguards ensures children have basic water survival skills in just 8 lessons.

The need is critical because children living in urban areas drown at a rate almost three times that of other children, often due to a lack of exposure to swimming lessons at an early age. In a city bordered by a river, in a state surrounded by water and home to hundred of inland lakes, the risk is greater than in most places. Interestingly, the first mass swimming lessons were developed in 1910 at the old Downtown Detroit Y by George Corsan, who later toured Ys across the country demonstrating the technique.

Great shopping, a great environment and a great cause…spread the word and help Detroit Swims!

 

 

Posted on by

Camp Phoenix is More Than Summer School

No kid wants to go to summer school….after a school year spent in classrooms, who wants to spend more time at a desk? But most kids — and their parents — would love a fun, safe, exciting camp experience for the summer, and if they learn something too, so much the better.

The YMCA’s Camp Phoenix does exactly that. Kids keep up their learning over the long summer months, while having a great time in a fun, caring, nurturing environment.

Camp Phoenix started 13 years ago and was originally a partnership with the Junior League of Birmingham. It grew quickly past the Junior League’s capacity to handle it, and through connections with the Carls YMCA became a Y program.

That first year, they had 75 kids at one site in Pontiac and another 150 more on the waiting list…now, it serves 120 kids in Detroit, 90 in Flint and 490 in Pontiac.

Camp Phoenix is wildly successful for several reasons, but one major key to success is that they make connections with the entire family. Many of these children have experienced some academic or behavioral struggles in school. At Camp Phoenix, teachers are required to make 3 positive connections with parents during the 6-week session; that means mentioning some kind of progress or achievement to the parents at least three times.

They also have a social worker on staff so that any needs that families might have, or barriers to attending the session, can be addressed.

“If kids are operating on a survival basis, they’re not in a place they can learn — they are not growing,” says Lisa Senac, Camp Phoenix director. The goal is to make sure campers can get their resource needs taken care of so that they can learn and thrive.

The camp also introduces kids to what are common experiences for many, but for children in challenging situations they are brand new — things like going to the beach or to the movies. One little girl actually started crying on the movie field trip when the lights went down — she’d never been to the theater and was not prepared for the loud noise and darkness.

Teachers weave those experiences into the curriculum — math at the beach, language arts at the movies, for example. Besides that benefit, exposure to these novel experiences gets children’s brains firing and primes them for more and better learning.

Everything comes fro what the community wants, versus a top-down “we’ll tell you what you need” approach. Teachers and staff do a focus group with parents and community members before the session starts to get ideas and understand each community’s needs.

Of course, all this learning is not going to happen if there is not fun and enjoyment as well. Teachers start decorating their spaces well before the session, transforming them from bland classrooms to inviting, invigorating spaces.  Kids get tickets for making positive choices, and can redeem them for prizes.

Because many families have multiple children, or multiple generations living together, Camp Phoenix  services a broad age range. There’s care for kids as young as 3, all the way up to a job readiness program for young adults 21 and younger.

Another way they empower the kids is to allow them to give as well as receive. Each year, kids choose a cause to raise funds and support. This year, they are raising money for the family of a Camp Phoenix camper –their father, a roofer, fell off a roof and died while working. They’ve done a car wash and other projects to raise money.

Camp Phoenix does a lot of good for their campers every summer — it’s six weeks that impacts their entire lives. And it’s not only the students and their families who benefit. “When you go in there, you can just see it — you’re feeling all that goodness,” says Lisa. “This is the kind of feeling you want to have.”

 

 

 

 

 

Posted on by

Campers Get Surprise In The Mail

Life is full of surprises, as campers at the South Oakland’s  YMCA’s day camp discovered last week. As part of their opening week theme, “The Great Wide Open,” Discovery campers (ages 5-6) wrote notes about camp, attached them to balloons, and let the balloons float away to “great wide open” spaces unknown. Each note had the Y address with a request for anyone who found the notes to write back, and the children speculated about where their messages might end up.

They got a big surprise last week, when a letter with a New York City return address arrived at the Y. Inside was a note from a woman who had, on her way to work, seen a balloon sent off by camp counselor Miss Autumn . She stopped, retrieved it, read the note, and wrote back. Her note said:

“Miss Autumn, Found caught on a branch on the way to work in New York City. Hope all the kids have a good time at camp.”

The kids were thrilled to get a note back, and were even more surprised when they saw how far away New York is from Michigan.

Campers got to learn about geography, communication, and maybe even most importantly, that life is full of good people and wonderful surprises.

 

Posted on by

Y Helps New Family Cope

Any parent can remember the emotional and physical challenges of those first days and weeks with a new baby…being exhausted, joyful, and in awe of this newly arrived little person. It can also be somewhat scary.

For Macomb YMCA Director Josh Landefeld and his wife Christy, all those emotions of new parents and more were magnified. Christy experienced a host of life-threatening complications and lost her sight while giving birth to their daughter two years ago.

Daughter Emy was fine, despite being a little premature. She spent some time in neonatal intensive care but was able to come home within a week. For her mother, things were not so smooth. Christy spent Emy’s first two months in and out of the hospital with various complications.

That meant Josh was on solo dad duty, learning to do all the things a new parent does while his wife struggled to get better. “It was extremely challenging, trying to take care of Emy at the same time and visit Christy and make sure I was there for her,” he says. “For a couple hours each day either I and/or Emy would go back into the hospital to see Christy and do what we could to have a family connection during those challenging moments.”

That difficult time was made easier by the support from his coworkers at the Plymouth YMCA, where he was director at the time. A few days a week, he had to bring Emy to work with him… not only because of a lack of childcare options but because he enjoyed spending the time with her forging the all-important father-daughter bond. And it wasn’t just her dad she bonded with. “Everyone there was extremely supportive …everyone was wonderful,” Josh says, “They provided care and love in way most babies don’t get at that young of an age.”

It wasn’t just a blessing to Josh and Emy to have the support from the Y staff; they also enjoyed the chance to get to know Emy and see her grow and develop. And all that love and care from a team of very caring people has had a great effect on his daughter, Josh says. “All the interactions with different people and situations in her early life helped her grow into something special,” he says.

Christy continues to improve. She attended a program to help her adjust to life without her vision, and this past fall went back to teaching. She also served as a Girls on the Run coach at her school. Emy, who recently turned two, is a healthy, happy, talkative toddler. And the Y family continues to be very much a part of theirs. “I’m very fortunate to work at a branch and an organization where that kind of love and support and understanding was there,” Josh says. “And they have continued to be supportive through all of it. The whole time you know you’re having a kid, you know it will change your life — we just didn’t know it would change this much.”