Topic Archives: SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

The generosity of others is at the core of the Y’s existence as a nonprofit. It is only through the support of our hundreds of thousands of volunteers and public and private donors that we are able to support and give back to the communities we engage.

Stories about the Y Community Impact in Social Responsibility are below.

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Get a 31-Cent Iced Coffee, Help the Y

How about this for a win-win? At participating Metro Detroit Dunkin’ Donuts stores tomorrow (May 21) you can get a delicious small iced coffee for 31 cents. And for each one sold, Dunkin’ Donuts will donate 31 cents to the YMCA of Metropolitan Detroit. You can buy coffee for the whole office, be everyone’s favorite coworker of the day, and help out the Y at the same time!

The idea is to “put winter on ice” and given that it’s supposed to be in the 80s tomorrow, it’s a pretty appropriate time to do so! It’s a good way to try Dunkin’ Donuts’ many flavored iced coffees, and support the Y as well. And you can enjoy your treat without derailing your healthy Y-member lifestyle: A plain iced coffee with skim milk and sucralose sweetener is only 30 calories for a small, while a mint chocolate chip coffee is 110 and an old-fashioned butter pecan flavor is only 90 calories. Visit the Dunkin’ Donuts website to find a location near you.

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Y Arts Hosts 10-Minute Play Festival

On Saturday afternoon, the Y-Arts Program hosts the debut 10-Minute Play Festival, which features five short-form works from several local playwrights.

The 10-Minute Play Festival presents the work of locally-based playwrights, including Marty Shea and Ian Bonner, whose film The Owner screened at the Y in January. Y Arts director Margaret Edwartowski also has a play in the festival as well. Acclaimed Michigan playwrights Kim Carney and David MacGregor, as well as local actor Stephen Blackwell, are also presenting their work.

The 10-Minute Play Festival is a chance for actors to hear their works read aloud by actors, see how audiences react, and hear feedback. There will be a talkback with the playwrights after the readings where audience members can talk with the playwrights and discuss their impressions of the work.

Y Arts coordinator Seth Amadei sifted through a little more than 30 submissions to come up with the five that will be presented at the festival. Both he and Margaret Edwartowski reached out to their connections in the Detroit theater community for submissions. “We have some really talented writers here in the city,” Seth says.

The format is challenging a real test of a writer’s talent; instead of two or three acts to engage an audience and tell a story, they have about the span of one-third of a sitcom. “It is a challenge for the playwright to fit an interesting and complete story into ten minutes,” he says.
The 10-Minute Play Festival starts at 3 p.m. on Saturday at the Marlene Boll Theater in the Boll Family YMCA. Admission is free.

 

 

 

 

 

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School Spotlighted in Art Exhibit

Visitors to the Boll Family YMCA throughout the month of March may have noticed some fairly unusual things about the most recent art exhibit in the lobby. They’re organized not by theme or visual similarity, but by school subject. And the works are very diverse — not only paint and pencil, but handwork such as hand-sewn dolls and knitted items.

These pieces are the work of students at the Detroit Waldorf School. Waldorf is a form of education that infuses arts into the curriculum in many ways. Math concepts, for example, are explained by singing, storytelling, and rhythmic activities which letchildren use their whole bodies to learn. Visual art helps with memorization and helps students to appreciate the beauty of numbers.

“We really connect it to our curriculum,” says Charis Calender-Suemnick, outreach director for the school.

Waldorf is a small school, with only 132 students this school year across grade 1-8. One of the goals of having the exhibit at the Y was to increase enrollment, Charis says, and also to showcase the abilities of their students. They came to the Y because several parents were members, and it has been a good experience all around, she says. They had an opening exhibit in early March which drew a lot of interest and was very exciting for the students, to see their work on display in a gallery setting. It shows how accomplished students are upon graduation, Charis says. “Kids that graduate from here are so versatile in their talents and their interests.”

The Detroit Waldorf school was founded in 1966 and is located in the Indian Village neighborhood of Detroit. It is part of an international community of Waldorf schools, with more than 1,000 schools in 60 countries.

Want to learn more? Check out this video made by one of the Waldorf parents about the Y exhibit:

Waldorf Video.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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New School Carries Out Y Mission

The YMCA’s mission is youth development, social responsibility and healthy living. That takes many forms, from the familiar such as youth swim lessons and senior exercise, to programs many people are not even aware the Y offers but that serve a need in their community. Here in Detroit, that means the Y’s mission includes opening charter schools to provide an alternative for families who are not served by the city’s traditional public schools. Two schools, Detroit Leadership Academy and Detroit Innovation Academy, serve kindergarten through 8th grade, and beginning this fall, Detroit Leadership Academy for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, a high school, will open its doors to its first class.

Enrollment is underway for the high school currently. It will welcome its first class of 125 ninth graders this fall and add a grade every year until this first class reaches 12th grade. The curriculum is based around the Covey Seven Habits for Highly Effective Teens. Class sizes will be small, between 20 and 25 students per class. Each student will have adult role models and and mentors. The school has established a relationship with Big Brothers/Big Sisters, and adults within the school will form relationships with the students as well. Research has shown that if a teen has a relationship with at least one caring adult at school — and it could be anyone from the principal to the lunchroom aide  — they are much more likely to succeed.

In addition to fostering academic success, the school’s core beliefs include developing a sense of what it means to be part of a community, and personal power, which means to develop a clear sense of self and one’s purpose and passion.

Entrepreneurship is a big part of the curriculum, as the school’s name indicates. Students will learn to write business plans as well as learn skills necessary to excel in the work world, either on their own or as employees. “The idea is to get them thinking as businesspersons,” says Anita Tucker, business office manager for the school. They plan to offer international travel opportunities and innovative technology as well. Y programing will be a big part of their offerings; the Y I-CAN Achieve curriculum that blends work, service, positive decision making and physical activity will be available to all students.

The school is located near U-M Dearborn and Henry Ford Community College. Dual enrollment will be available at both schools, which could allow students to graduate with a year or two of college credit as well as a high school diploma.

The school is a charter school, which means they do not charge tuition. Enrollment will continue until the class is full.

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Students Experience Work at the Y

The Y is the first job for lots of young people, whether it’s working as a day camp counselor, a lifeguard, or in child watch. At the Macomb YMCA, students from the Pankow Center in L’Anse Creuse  Public Schools have been coming to the Y to get some of their first work experiences for nine years now.
This year’s crop of students,  Marina, Victoria and Elvi, come to the Y four days a week for a little less than an hour a day as part of their regular school day.  They help out with everything from washing, drying and folding towels to cleaning the fitness equipment to assembling mailings. Sometimes they help with events, or work outdoors on the Y’s beautiful, volunteer-maintained gardens.
Betty Peretiatko, who works with them through the school and supervises them at the Y, says that it’s a great way for these young people to get some work experience, and everyone a the Y is very accepting and welcoming of them. They’ve made a great deal of progress through their time at the Y. It’s a good thing for the Y staff, as well, because with the students to help them with more routine tasks they can focus more on serving members. “We have such a great partnership with the Y,” says Betty. “They are observing people at work and out in public, and the Y staff serves as role models for them.”
The students are required to call in if they are sick, and have assigned tasks they are expected to accomplish with minimal direction. It’s clear from observing them they have a strong sense of pride in their work and want to do well. Steve Krankota, membership cordonator for the Macomb Y, says they have become a part of the Y family. As for the students, they wear their Y shirts with pride and look forward to coming there, Betty says.

 

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Social Club Brings Young People Together

For teens and twenty-somethings, social life is extremely important as they start to establish independent lives of their own. Friends really become like a second family that provides companionship and a sense of security as young people launch into the real world.

And that bond with friends is something that all young people need, regardless of disability or difference. That’s why the Birmingham YMCA  stepped up to the challenge when an educator and mother of a child with autism asked them to start a program for young people like her son.

“In high school they have therapeutic services such as speech, occupational therapy, etc., and that takes the place of specialized activities like dance or sports,” says Bonnie McDonald, who approached the Y with her idea to to start a social club for teens and young adults with autism. “As they get older those things die away, and they need opportunities. They need repeated exposure to the same group of kids and a chance to practice their skills.”

The Y launched the program in January. On Saturday evenings, a group of around a dozen kids gather at the Birmingham Y to play Wii games, build things out of Legos, play board games, share a meal, and do a physical activity. It feels like any other gathering of young people on a Saturday night….there’s high spirits, loud music, and lots of energy.

Because kids with autism generally have trouble with over-stimulation and reading social cues, Y staff will work with them and pair up people with similar interests to do things together. By this age, many of them are doing pretty well with social skills because they’ve had lots of practice, so Y staff is mostly there to guide and encourage rather than teach.

“It teaches them socialization and interaction indirectly,” says Pam Smith, who runs the program for the the Y. “When they become comfortable, it gets them to a place where they can have a community where they are accepted.”

The eventual goal is to have club members form friendships with each other, so they can get together and socialize outside of the Y and create a social circle they can transition to adulthood with — the same thing their neurotypical peers need at this age.

Every meeting includes some physical activity like kickball, which helps keep their energy up and helps with team building, says Mark Ralko, who runs adaptive fitness programs for the Y.  Unlike other places where people with special needs might feel ostracized, the people he works with in the autism socialization program as well as his other groups are comfortable at the Y. “I have noticed they are not nervous,” he says. “They have a sense that they truly belong here.”

 

 

 

 

 

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Empty Bowls To Feed The Hungry

Imagine not knowing where your next meal is coming from. That’s the case for the more than 770,000 people who face hunger in the Metro Detroit region; half of those are children or seniors.

On Wednesday, the Marlene Boll theater and lobby space of the Boll Family YMCA will host their fourth annual Empty Bowls fundraiser to bring attention to the problem of hunger in our community and raise funds to help combat it.

Empty Bowls is a national movement started by the Imagine/RENDER group. A group organizes an event –usually a soup luncheon or dinner– and professional or amateur potters donate bowls to the event. Local restaurants or volunteer cooks generally provide the soup. Participants purchase a bowl of soup and get to take the handcrafted bowl with them, as a reminder of the people who frequently face “empty bowls” at mealtime. Proceeds go to fight hunger in the local community.

For the YMCA event, the bowls have been made by ACE Academy, a “strict discipline” charter school for court-adjudicated youth ages 12 to 20, located in Highland Park. This allows these young people to experience doing something good for others through the arts and their own effort and creativity. Students at ACE Academy also participate in improv classes taught by the Y-Arts program through the Detroit Creativity Project.

Proceeds from the Y’s Empty Bowls event will benefit Gleaners Community Food Bank.

A $10 donation buys participants a delicious bowl of soup (several kinds will be available), refreshments, and a bowl made by the students of ACE Academy. There will be a display of students’ art work and a presentation in the theater. The Empty Bowls event runs from 6:00 p.m. to 8:30 pm on Wednesday, February 13. Sounds like a lovely pre-Valentine’s Day date!

 

 

 

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City Kids Learn Baseball Skills

The Boll family YMCA stands almost within sight of Comerica Park, where the American league Champion Detroit Tigers play. And while the field is covered with snow and spring training is still a long way off, Detroit kids are getting a chance to learn the fundamentals of baseball through a series of clinics at the Boll Family YMCA.

Justin Prinstein runs the clinics. He’s a professional baseball player in Europe, acting as player-manager of the Hrosi Drno team in the Czech Republic and also serving as manager of the Hungarian national baseball team. When he returned home to Detroit in the off-season, he was looking for a place to train and found the Boll Y. In doing so, he realized that Detroit lacks facilities to play baseball, especially the kind of indoor winter training clinics that are common in the suburbs. So he approached Y program director Nikole Saffle about starting a baseball clinic for the community that would be free to the public. The first clinics last year were a huge success, and this year’s series kicks off today.

“We have kids who come in that have never seen a baseball, and we also have kids come in who are really good and really talented and could go someplace,” he says.  The Y has a type of portable batting cage that can be used indoors, soft, cushioned baseballs and other equipment. For this year’s clinics, Franklin Park Vision in Sylvania, Ohio donated hundreds of dollars worth of equipment for the participants to use, Justin says.

The program is open to both boys and girls. In fact, Justin says, last year a girl was the best player.

Although the Tigers’ recent success has sparked more interest in baseball, city kids tend to be more into football or basketball. Justin says that beyond learning a new sports skill, there are a lot of valuable lessons in baseball that can benefit young people.

For example, he says, it’s a team sport so sometimes players have to sacrifice for the good of the whole team, but individual excellence also matters. And because there is no clock, it teaches patience and persistence: sometimes players have to wait for the right pitch before they swing instead of making choices because the clock is running down, and even if they are down 20 runs in the last inning they could still come back and win the game so giving it their all until the very last out is important. “They learn you should keep fighting and keep trying even when you see all the cards are stacked against you,” he says.

Another way in which persistence pays off in baseball and life is learning how to accept failure as well as success. “You can be the best player in the world and still get an out 7 or 8 times out of 10,” Justin says. “Learning how to be not successful is just as important as learning how to be successful.”

The next clinics are Feb. 9 and 23 and every Saturday in March. Ages 7-9 or less experienced players can come from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. and ages 10-12 or more experienced players can come from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. Programs are free, but preregistration is suggested to reserve a spot. Call the Boll Connection Desk at 313-309-9622 to preregister.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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New Program Helps Families Set Goals

Twenty families who use the Y’s child care facilities are getting a chance to learn how to dream big — and make those dreams a reality — with a new family financial empowerment program.

The program, funded by the United Way, targets families with incomes between 100 percent and 200 percent of the poverty line. The Y has recruited a specialist in career coaching and life coaching, who will have initial one-hour sessions with each family during which they will set some financial and career goals, and then have follow-up sessions over the phone for the next several months.

The next phase is a motivational forum, where participants will come to the Y, have dinner and hear speakers discuss such topics as financial literacy, finding their passions and the importance of saving. Dinner will be served and child care will be provided, which is an important factor in making it possible for families to attend these events, says Matthew Cunningham, the family financial planning program coordinator. “it’s not just focused on finding a job, but asking people ‘what do you really want to do’ and looking at their skills, interests and what needs to be developed,” he says. “We’re focusing on their strengths and combining that with the life coaching philosophy. Instead of just saying ‘hey, you need to get a job’ — we say ‘you’re going to do this thing that is your passion, and we’re going to advocate on your behalf.”

Finally, if participants have attended the events and are working well with their career coach, they will be awarded a certain percentage off their childcare bill, up to half. For these families, who often live paycheck to paycheck and have to stretch every dollar, that’s a significant amount of money to have back in their monthly budget. And with the financial planning skills they have learned, they will be able to put the money to good use furthering their financial goals.

The program will kick off with families from the Boll and Lakeshore branches and expand to Farmington and Downriver later this year.  Childcare center directors helped recruit families, Matthew says, because they were aware of families that sometimes had to pay their bill late or were struggling in another way and could benefit from the training.

Empowering families to reach for a better future is the goal of the program, Matthew says. “So many of these parents are very committed and motivated. They’ve faced a lot of adversity and overcame those obstacles. Those folks who can make the commitment to do the coaching and commit to all the motivational forums can see a real change in  their life, and use the program as a catapult to a better level of life.”

 

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13 Reasons to Support the Y in 2013

Most people know the Y as a place for “gym and swim,” and fostering healthy living is a core part of the Y’s mission. But the Y does much more than that in the community and for the community. Over the last year we’ve shared some of those stories of how the people at the Y — members and staff — go above and beyond to do everything from ensuring everyone has a place at the Y to fostering future Olympians to raising student performance in school. Here’s a look at some of those stories….and we look forward to bringing you even more in 2013!

1. Everyone belongs at the Y. If there’s one thing that defines the Y more than anything else, that’s it. From people with disabilities to seniors to single parents and everyone in between, the Y, through the Strong Kids Campaign, ensures everyone who could benefit can be a part of the Y. More than that, though, the welcoming atmosphere and friendly staff make people feel like valued members of the Y family.

2. The Y provides access to the arts to people who might not otherwise have a path discover their creative spark. The Detroit Creativity Project, supported by a group of successful Detroit-expatriate actors and comedians now mostly living in Los Angeles, has provided more than 100 high school students with improvisation classes taught by local professionals. Y-Arts instructors are prominent in their fields in addition to teaching kids the fundamentals of visual arts, hip-hop, acting and more. And the lobby gallery of the Boll Family YMCA provides a space for the community to see the work of well-respected artists in all media.

3. The Metro Youth YMCA, or MY-Y, encourages youth to achieve their dreams — and beyond. From showing them a path to college to actually driving them to out-of-state scholarship interviews, MY-Y impacts at-risk young people’s lives for the better.

4. More than 700 Detroit school kids learned to swim for free through the Detroit Swims program. African-American and Hispanic youth are at much higher risk of drowning than Caucasian children; teaching them to swim will reverse that tragic toll. The eventual goal is to have every child in the city of Detroit able to use basic survival skills in the water.

5. More than 800 girls learn life lessons through running with the Girls on The Run program. Not only do they develop themselves as runners — a physical activity they can enjoy for a lifetime — they learn lessons about self-esteem, peer pressure, and stress management, among other themes. One group even got a visit from the reigning Miss Michigan, Angela Venditti. The Girls on the Run philosophy is to teach girls to Honor Their Bodies, Celebrate their Voices, Embrace their Gifts and Activate Their Power.

6. Y staff believe in the mission; their work goes far beyond just a paycheck. Lifeguard Chelsea Cheek, a college student working two jobs, donates a substantial percent of her paycheck from lifeguard duty at the Macomb YMCA to the Strong Kids Campaign and has raised money through community events. Staff at South Oakland have donated time to teach classes, help with a Mom-To-Mom sale, and more to raise money for Strong Kids scholarships. And even the youngest members step up with creative ways to fundraise.

7. The Y encourages fathers to bond with their kids. The Adventure Guides program, which will be expanding to more branches in 2013, sends fathers and daughters off on adventures from ice skating to camping, creating bonds that last a lifetime.

8. The Y rallies behind its staff and members in tough times. Health worries, job losses, sudden disability, even unimaginable tragedy — the Y steps up.

9. Even people who never fit the fitness-enthusiast mold learn to enjoy a healthy, active lifestyle at the Y. Alexis Sumner went from weighing 400 pounds to doing sprint triathlons, and new mom Dani Keith-Marchment finished her first 5K when she never thought that was possible thanks to the help of her trainer.

10. Providing quality education and improving skills is a key part of the Y’s impact. The Y runs two schools locally, Detroit Leadership Academy and Detroit Innovation Academy, both of which have received gorgeous playgrounds through the hard work of volunteers. And the Y’s summer program for at-risk students, Camp Phoenix, serves students’ entire families and has a measurable impact on academic performance.

11. Day camp at all branches provides children, from toddlers through teens, with a high-quality and fun experience, and parents with peace of mind that their children are in a safe, caring environment.

12. Middle-school age youth throughout the Detroit Metro Area learn about the importance of making smart decisions about sexual activity — and that staying abstinent is the healthiest choice for them — through the Y SWIFT (Sexual Wellness Information for Teens) program.

13. The Y launches future Olympians. Three-time Olympic medalist Peter Vanderkaay began swimming at the Y at age 7, and continues to give back through helping raise awareness of the Detroit Swims program.