The Granite YMCA

Youth development - The Y recognizes and celebrates its role as a major service provider in childhood and youth development. The Y is committed to increasing opportunities for youth to deepen values and build positive assets. All youth programs reinforce The Y's core values of honesty, respect, caring and responsibility. These guided principles help children make positive choices in their lives and contribute to building strong families and communities. The Y also seeks to build positive assets in youth by providing opportunities for them to engage in lifelong healthy activities with strong role models to help guide their decisions. (Continued on Schedule O)It is proven that the more positive assets a child has, the less likely they are to engage in high-risk behavior that may lead to negative health habits and anti-social behaviors.With this as a backdrop, The Y is the largest provider of childcare programs in its area, serving over 1,840 children per day at 34 sites state-wide. The Y places a special emphasis on ensuring access to programs in low-income areas by providing financial assistance through grants, state aid and YMCA fundraising.The Y is also committed to providing healthy alternatives for youth during the high-risk after school hours, by providing an extensive variety of programs to serve a children's many interests. These programs include instructional and competitive swimming, gymnastics and dance programs, and a multitude of youth sports programs, including basketball, soccer, wrestling, t-ball, outdoor adventure, tennis, and general fitness. The Y encourages the use of volunteers and mentors to run its programs and includes family participation to bring families closer together.Due to the Y's long-standing involvement in aquatics and concern for keeping children safe around oceans, ponds, lakes, streams, rivers and swimming pools, we provide a free aquatic safety program that serves 1,000 fourth grade children per year from Manchester's elementary school system.During the summer months, when children are not in school, The Y offers day and resident camping programs at 6 major camping facilities for children 4 to 15 years old and serves over 1,780 children per day. We offer financial assistance programs to ensure our center-city and low-income children have the same opportunities to participate and interact with children from within and outside the state and country. A major emphasis of our camping programs is to provide opportunities for youth to gain leadership skills by progressing from a camper to a leader-in-training (l.i.t.), to a counselor-in-training (c.i.t.), to a junior counselor, and finally to a full counselor. Each year, The Y employs over 450 young adults and is one of the community's largest youth employers.Through our camping and youth programs, we can offer opportunities for youth development all year round. This provides consistent support to build a healthy spirit, mind, and body in our children, so they can grow and thrive.

Social responsibility - The Y acts as a community partner whenever possible to address critical community needs. A number of our communities have experienced a significantly higher percentage of school dropouts and school failures than other communities in the state. The Y has taken the lead to impact this important issue by offering many special programs to reduce school dropouts and close the achievement gap for at-risk youths.The YMCA START afterschool program in Manchester's center city Beech and Wilson schools provides a research-based achievement gap program for twenty-seven youth daily. (Continued on Schedule O)The program provides five staff who tutor, mentor, and provide math, literacy, and 21st century skills geared at building academic competencies, social skills and strong relationships to school and community. 85% of the participants are below federal poverty guidelines. English is a second language for many of the children, so the additional tutoring and homework help is critical in improving their success in school. Most families pay as little as $11.00 per week, and many families receive fully subsidized services, made possible through our fundraising and grant activities. This reduces the number of families on state assistance, as it enables parents to work while knowing their children are well cared for.The support, tutoring, and adventure for youth program (YSTAY) is run in all four middle schools and one high school in Manchester, NH. The program provides a staff member in each school to tutor, mentor, and provide positive group work experience geared at building academic competency, social skills, and a strong relationship with the school and community. The Y serves 120-plus youth per year and supports 125 alumni and family members.The Y also provides a special program called YSTRIVE, for suspended and expelled students. No program currently exists in Manchester to support these individuals when they are out of school. The Y runs this program in cooperation with the Manchester School Department in the YMCA of Downtown Manchester branch. This program provides an opportunity for students to complete their schoolwork to stay on course with their studies, receive tutoring help, perform community service, and to learn ways to improve social skills to avoid further problems in school. 107 youth were served by this program this past year.Over 105 teens took advantage of The Y's Free Teen Center last year. Teen Center activities include tutoring, mentoring, daily physical activity choices, arts and crafts, leadership and community service, and healthy cooking workshops at the Downtown Manchester branch and the YMCA Allard Center branch, located in Goffstown, New Hampshire.

Healthy living - we know that 90% of any one person's health is directly related to where they are born, live, learn, work, and grow old. The social determinants of health, such as economic stability, neighborhood and physical environment, education, health food, community and social integration, and quality health care, can either provide smooth pathways to health and success or be an insurmountable barriers, all depending on the environment one finds themselves in. The Y has always believed that a healthy spirit, mind, and body are crucial to helping an individual develop to their fullest potential. We have also been committed to ensuring that everyone, regardless of ability to pay, has access to The Y and its programs and services that support a healthy lifestyle. (Continued on Schedule O)What we now know, based on scientific evidence, is that if we can remove barriers to health for more people - such as poverty, hunger, education, and social integration - we will not only improve the potential for every individual, but our communities will, in turn, thrive.The Y offers a sliding fee scale and financial aid to remove financial barriers that may prevent participation. Last year, we provided financial aid and/or free services to over 9,820 people to ensure all who need help, receive help. Of this number, 921 received free or discounted memberships at the Y and 5,488 received financial assistance enabling them to participate in a Y program. The value of assistance is over $1.3 million.As a part of this commitment, the Y provides free memberships to over 56 other non-profit agencies whose clients have special needs, such as foster homes, group homes for children with no parents, drug and alcohol treatment centers, mentoring programs and disabled individuals. Collaborating to support others in our community is a major focus for our organization. The Y's core values of honesty, caring, respect and responsibility are taught to help all people commit to individual and family wellness. The Y maintains a major focus on developing strong families and offers concurrent programming and childcare support through a program called family time. With this program, the entire family can come at one time to ensure everyone gets to participate in healthy activities. As a part of family time, the Y provides free care for children so parents can work out, knowing their children are well cared for. Over 70% of our memberships are youth and families, so this makes a big impact. In addition, we run special programs like: - Healthy Kids' Day, Brunch with Santa, and host family outings. - We offer special rates to families as well as to seniors to encourage membership. - We maintain a broad definition of families to ensure traditional and non-traditional families can participate. - Over 150 classes are offered each week for people of all walks of life with all kinds of interests.This broad scope of service ensures there is the opportunity for a lifetime of participation, which is the most powerful methodology for long term change. Providing these programs for all ages, levels and abilities offers a unique opportunity for youth to build lifelong relationships and friends, build self-confidence, spend quality time with their families and, of course, deepen values.