Introduction

The YMCAs Across Southwestern Ontario  

The YMCA is a registered charitable organization that has been serving communities across Southwestern Ontario for over 60 years. With core services in Health, Fitness and Recreation, Child Development and Community Learning and Careers, the YMCA serves over 22,000 individuals and families with centres in Chatham, Goderich, Lambton Shores, Parkhill and Sarnia.

Our website introduces the public to the work of our YMCAs in the following way:

Your YMCA takes many different shapes and serves a variety of locations across our region.  Whether you live near Goderich on Lake Huron, in Sarnia on the St. Clair River which forms the border with Michigan, or near Chatham close to Lake Erie, our YMCAs work collectively to meet your needs in health and wellness, licensed childcare, career retraining and personal development every day.

Our YMCAs have chosen a collaborative relationship that best suits our region of Ontario.  We describe our collaborative relationship as YMCAs across Southwestern Ontario in which we imbed a sense of inclusiveness and regionalism without sacrificing the unique local flavour of our YMCAs in the various communities and neighbourhoods that we serve.

This relationship is one of shared geography, shared purpose, and collaborative methodology.  Acting as one and delivering in a fashion that meets the needs of people from our home communities, through shared programs, staff, volunteers, and resources.  Ours is collaboration of spirit and of substance.  On paper, we are 2 separately incorporated entities; the YMCA of Sarnia-Lambton and the Family YMCA of Chatham-Kent.  Through partnership agreements with municipalities in Goderich-Huron, Lambton-Shores, North Middlesex, both regional school boards, community partners, and the management agreement that guides our Shared Services arrangement, we have become more impactful than our constituent parts.

Beginning in 2002, with an agreement to manage the YMCA in Chatham-Kent, the YMCA of Sarnia-Lambton has engaged in supportive capacity building across this area of Ontario.  Through progressive and deliberate planning, business acumen and a commitment to community strengthening, our YMCAs have grown from serving 12,000 people at the turn of the century to serving well over 36,000 Ontarians.

As a local YMCA member, volunteer, participant, or staff we should recognize that our local community connection remains central to the health based outcomes we wish to achieve. We describe our collaboration in a way that is unique within our National YMCA Federation; an organized group of YMCAs, managed and governed as one by a staff and volunteer team in Southwestern Ontario with a goal to provide programs and services that strengthen the health and well-being of individuals and communities we call home.  We are open, growing, and looking to increase our impact across this region of Canada.  We are the YMCAs across Southwestern Ontario and we are making a difference building stronger kids and stronger families, one community at a time.        

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