YMCA of Northern Alberta

Posted by Vi Hughes on Apr 06, 2017
 
This past Tuesday we heard from Joan Baker, pictured, VP of Community Housing Initiatives from the YMCA of Northern Alberta. The YMCA of Northern Alberta has facilities in Edmonton, Grande Prairie and Wood Buffalo. They have six Health, Fitness and Aquatics centers in northern Alberta where they have a policy that no one who can not afford these programs will be turned away. About one in five users of these facilities fall under this policy. They are also the largest provider of child care in northern Alberta, with sixty six centers, with twenty two early childhood and forty four out of school programs.
 
They also provide community programs such as education, literacy and employment supports, leadership development, and supports for immigrants, refugees, and foreign workers. In addition they provide community wellness programs, life skills (applying for income supports, shopping for groceries, navigating the neighbourhood, finding furniture, preparing meals, cleaning their clothing and home, using the transit system, finding a drug store, a family doctor or dentist, etc.). They have ten low income kitchens where they teach people how to prepare nutritious meals on a budget. They also connect clients with other providers of supports such as Mustard Seed or Housing for Humanity. A large portion of their programs are provided by volunteers. They had over six hundred volunteers last year.
 
Their housing philosophy is to provide housing first, along with all of the above supports, in order to give people a chance to remain housed into the future. They currently have two facilities that provide housing, the downtown YMCA building on 102A Ave., that has room for one hundred twenty people, and the MelCor YMCA Village, in the Boyle Street area, which has one hundred and fifty units.  The downtown building is very old and requires extensive renovation to bring it up to code. The expense to do this makes it not feasible, so it was decided last fall to close this facility. All but forty of the occupants have now been helped to find other accommodation. They are working on finding housing for the remaining forty people prior to the closing of the facility this fall.
 
The YMCA has an enterprise model for funding, which means they charge fees for some of their services, but others are provided free, based on need. Their budget target to raise this year is three point one million.  They receive social (individual) funding, government funding and a small amount of funding from the United Way.  They manage their own charitable foundation (the Edmonton YMCA Foundation), and also have a charitable endowment fund under the Edmonton Community Foundation. The vast majority of their funding comes from private individuals like us.
 
 
Joan Baker