FORE Our Community

July 1, 2020

We had BIG plans for our 30th Annual YMCA Golf Classic; after all, it’s the Diamond Anniversary. This year is certainly not what anyone expected, but our YMCA community is strong and resilient. As a mark of our strength and the opportunity to re-connect with our Executive Leaders and Annual Campaign Chair, we invite you to join us on July 27th at Pleasant Valley Country Club – we’ll deliver a one-of-a-kind experience in support of our important community work.

Learn more about the 30th Annual YMCA Golf Classic HERE

a special thank you

June 30, 2020

A note from our President and CEO, David Connell:

Good Evening:

As we come to the close of another month, I wanted to share my perspective on some of the “Responders” during COVID-19. However, a few minutes ago, I received this email from Paula Perrier, Director of Child Development Services at The Sarah and Richard Hardy YMCA Child Development Center in Southbridge. I believe that Paula’s words amplifies the outstanding work that will continue in the days and weeks ahead. Thank you Paula and Team.

Paula wrote:

(Please share with anyone I might have missed!)

It’s nearly closing time on June 30, 2020. A cloudy and rainy, but warm afternoon here in Southbridge and we can all finally take a deep breath and exhale, knowing that today is Day #69 for us here at the Sarah and Richard Hardy YMCA Child Development Center. Sixty nine days providing emergency childcare to the children of parents who had to go to work at essential positions during the COVID-19 pandemic; 14 long weeks! It was a much sadder good bye than I had predicted. Many of our children had climbed into our hearts and will be greatly missed as they too, return to their new normal. The best thing about today is knowing so many of our “old” friends will return to our care next week. Zooming with our families and seeing so many of our children certainly made us long for their return. But, we will miss our new “emergency” friends and their families.

We remained healthy. We remained safe. We were apprehensive at first, forging unchartered waters. There were so many things that we did not know about this virus; but we learned together and we also learned our own strength to be resilient and creative. We stretched ourselves in order to be able to do what we do best; provide quality education and care to children. I can delightedly report that we all did it! This period will always remain with me as one of the greatest successes in my many years. Children were safely cared for while their parents went to work each day knowing their children were in a good place. We played, we learned, and we got to know new friends. We smiled, we laughed, and we practiced “physical” distancing, while never allowing ourselves to become “socially” distant. I cannot thank the educators ( and administrators) who stepped up and answered this call. Thank you to our TCY emergency staff and thank you to our brothers and sisters from the other YMCA of Central branches who did the same in their communities. Thank you to our supervisors and the continued support they readily offered us all. Truly, this was a YMCA team effort.

I am very proud to work alongside all of you!

Good luck on your reopening! We all should be experts by now!

– Paula

Paula A. Perrier

Director of Child Development Services

The Sarah and Richard Hardy YMCA Child Development Center

115 Marcy Street

Summer Meals for Worcester

June 30, 2020

Summer Meals Home Delivery for Worcester Residents!

Monday – Friday
11:00 AM to 3:00 PM
Beginning Monday, July 6th, 2020

July 6 – August 28
2 meals per child per day
(Meals for Saturday & Sunday delivered on Fridays)

The YMCA is delivering meals to your doorstep this summer!
Contact us and we’ll add you to the list!

Email [email protected]
or call 774- 530- 1647

When you call or email please include:
– Your Last Name
– Your Address
– Number of children 17 years & under in your house

download summer meals pdf flyer

committed to the community

June 23, 2020

Worcester Business Journal
By Devina Bhalla
Updated: June 22, 2020

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and widespread protesting against racial inequality, the YMCA of Central Massachusetts’ doors are always open to continue to work towards equality with all groups.

David Connell, president and CEO of the Worcester social service nonprofit, just finished his first year in his position leading the YMCA. He is the first CEO of color at the YMCA of Central Mass. and one of the few black CEOs of a leading business organization in the region.

The first nine months of his tenure included highlights like a record number of summer campers, serving 204,000 healthy meals and snacks, and supporting 1,400 children in programs providing affordable childcare and financial assistance to families in need.

Connell was able to fully integrate the Tri-Community Family Branch in Southbridge along with further implementing its mission framework, people, programs, and philanthropy, as its guiding principles.

These are just a few of the YMCA’s achievements before coronavirus interrupted their programming.

It was “a very good first year,” said Connell.

During COVID-19

Though coronavirus changed his job, many of the YMCA’s programs and much of its community work could easily be transferred into the virtual realm.

Donata Martin, executive director of the Boys & Girls Club of Fitchburg and Leominster, talked about how important it is for nonprofits to continue serving their communities in a time like this.

“We can have a lot of different programming utilizing the resources we have in the community,” said Martin, another one of the few black leaders of a major Central Massachusetts social service nonprofit. “Everyone is learning together.”

The Boys & Girls Club of Fitchburg and Leominster has been able to use videos to continue its STEM-based learning mission, sending videos of chicks hatching and fish developing to children in its programs.

The nonprofit has been sending letters in the mail to children, developing soft skills in the process.

Like the Boys & Girls Club, the YMCA continues to use virtual means to reach its members.

YMCA has an online community center, fitness classes, learning resources, and a mobile food program.

Finding opportunity in crisis

A large part of nonprofit organizations’ community support goes beyond online classes.

The YMCA opened up four sites to provide childcare for essential workers. Each site had a capacity of 40 children and all of the sites were close to this capacity level.

“It took some courage to do so,” said Connell. But they were able to implement strict criteria to help protect the children and the staff while providing this necessary and important service to essential workers in the community.

YMCA works with other nonprofit organizations, businesses, and lawmakers in order to influence policy to better help the community.

The YMCA had already been doing work in the community providing resources and aid to families in need, but the COVID-19 pandemic really highlighted how much the YMCA could do to help the community in these areas, Connell said.

“We were able to hit a number of goals I had…but there’s more work to be done…COVID-19 also showed us there’s a lot of opportunity that we will need to fill as we move forward,” he said.

Key areas of need coronavirus made very clear are issues of healthcare disparities, child care, and food insecurity, Connell said, and responding to communities needing assistance from a health perspective is an area the YMCA can work with others to help respond to.

Battling inequality

Part of responding and assisting these communities is the YMCA’s commitment to social and racial justice.

As an organization, YMCA of Central Massachusetts made a statement early on supporting the Black Lives Matter movement. It is working with the Worcester Together Coalition to not just make a statement, but invoke action as well.

“We are a place that can help foster discussions,” said Connell.

YMCA leverages the work it has done with its staff surrounding diversity and inclusion to help facilitate these discussions and make real changes.

“We continue to make some real tangible steps as folks go through this trauma that is a microcosm of issues taking place across the country,” said Connell.

However, Connell discussed how this work cannot be done individually or in isolation.

“Each organization should continue to look at where there are gaps, continue to make sure we are training our staff, so that we can interact appropriately and be in place for young leaders,” said Connell.

Connell grew up going to the YMCA in Worcester after immigrating from Barbados and has deep ties to the area.

Connell’s diverse background of experiences, whether it be in his career in banking to his life of volunteering, along with his race, faith, and experience in the Worcester community allows him to build strong relationships with staff, volunteers, members, and community leaders, he said.

“It is true that representation of people of color and women running organizations continues to be a challenging area,” said Connell, “and there needs to be additional work with that.”

For Connell, this work focuses on “how well we source for candidates and how well we develop candidates” on a local and national level.

“I see it as a level of development and exposure … There are a lot of great candidates around the country and we have to make sure they’re sourcing to find those candidates,” said Connell.

It is also important to have mentors from all levels of diversity and backgrounds, said Connell. His own mentors helped him along in his career and were an important part of him being in his current position.

The lack of diversity in an organization’s leadership is not just a problem in Central Massachusetts, he said.

“It continues to be a low percentage, and that’s not just in Massachusetts or Worcester County,” said Connell, “it happens to be beyond our local area.”

Through his position, the YMCA can continue to “create a place where we can have new voices. That [provides] an opportunity for us to heal, and grow, and move forward,” said Connell.

go to the article on wbjournal.com

North Central MA Faith Based Community Coalition

June 9, 2020

Building Stronger Communities Through Faith-Based Coalition

We are happy to provide space at our Montachusett Community Branch for the North Central MA Faith Based Community Coalition volunteers providing food and community services.

“This month’s newsletter is a special “Thank You” edition meant to express our sincerest appreciation to all of our volunteers, donors, and church partners for their enormously helpful contributions. Since the release of our last newsletter on May 9th, we have had four Sunday breakfasts with sandwich bags and four pasta suppers – totaling about 820 meals in the stomachs of our hungriest friends. This success would not be possible without the continued support from everyone in our village who are highlighted in this month’s newsletter.”

Read the full newsletter here

Worcester Together Statement

June 5, 2020

A JOINT STATEMENT FROM MEMBERS OF THE WORCESTER TOGETHER COALITION

Together we rise, together we stand, and together we change. On behalf of the Worcester Together Coalition, comprising more than 100 individuals and organizations formed in response to the COVID-19 crisis, we rise and we stand in condemnation of the brutal acts perpetrated by Minneapolis police officers in the murder of George Floyd. We stand in the name of countless Black lives lost at the hands of police and civil vigilantes and in the name of all Communities of Color that have and continue to experience institutional inequity and brutality. We seek to create and make change to shift the oppressive imbalances in our country in the name of all Communities of Color that have experienced profound loss including for George Floyd, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Alton Sterling, Sandra Bland, Botham Jean, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and for whom their families and communities have endured deep pain, anger, frustration, and fear because of systemic racism and inequity.

Silence is not an option. Action is paramount. Worcester Together has demonstrated our ability to act and respond in crisis through COVID-19. Today, we speak aloud in disgust and with deep sorrow for our community and our country, and to leverage our collective and unified power to act and make change. The devastating racial disparities exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic are intrinsically related to our nation’s history of white supremacy and structural racism. It is a legacy that we must reject and dismantle. As we seek to address the COVID-19 crisis and to build a fair and just “new normal” we commit ourselves to these principles in all that we do, both individually and collectively:

1. We will acknowledge the reality of white supremacism in our history and its insidious presence in our institutions, public school system, police department, community based organizations, and ways of doing business and will facilitate courageous conversations and frank discussion of the issues at hand as a community. We will recognize our inadvertent complicity in the perpetuation of this injustice.

2. We will approach every initiative, policy or program that we undertake as an opportunity to dismantle racism. We will do this explicitly and embrace accountability for our results.

3. We will consistently and promptly identify, name, question, and actively resist and denounce policies in our criminal justice, law enforcement, education and health institutions that injure people of color and deprive them of the opportunity to participate fully in the life of our community.

4. We will center, elevate and defer to voices of People of Color and support the economic advancement of Communities of Color by using our collective purchasing power to support locally owned Black, Latino, and immigrant businesses.

We are fallible humans acting in the name of humanity and cannot do this work alone. Please join us as we work together to create equity, shape and change our community and our country’s course.

The Worcester Together Coalition

Download the full statement pdf