2012 Highlights

• In 2012, more kids and families experienced meaningful opportunities for lasting change through the Y than ever before. The Y served more than 214,000 people throughout King and south Snohomish counties.
• The Y’s public/private partnership with the City of Snoqualmie resulted in the opening of the new Snoqualmie Valley YMCA, now reaching more than 6,000 youth and families, representing four out of 10 families in the city. The project received the Community Impact Award from the NAIOP Commercial Real Estate Development Association and has become a hub for the Snoqualmie Valley.

Youth Development

• The Y continued to develop and expand its Community Learning Centers (CLCs) serving Seattle Public Schools with a focus on helping low-income students produce lasting academic results.
• Building upon the foundation of its CLCs, the Y operated summer learning programs that proved successful in preventing summer learning loss, helping students to stay on grade level or to catch up if they were behind.
• The Y offered a daily average of nearly 700 free meals during the summer months to youth in Kenmore, Seattle, Shoreline and SeaTac – an increase of more than 200 over the previous year.
• The Y’s Boys Outdoor Leadership Development and Girls Outdoor Leadership Development programs, B.O.L.D. and G.O.L.D., received $500,000 in grants to expand nationally. Programs were launched in Canton, Ohio; Chattanooga, Tennessee; Minneapolis/St.Paul, Minnesota; Boise, Idaho; Billings and Bozeman, Montana; and Seattle and Bellingham, Washington.

Healthy Living

• The Y helped more individuals than ever to achieve well-being, providing 130,000 adults and youth with the support, guidance and resources needed to reduce their risk for chronic disease and reclaim their health. We expanded the YMCA’s Diabetes Prevention Program which King County offered as an employee benefit option. Other chronic disease prevention programs continued to grow and thrive including Actively Changing Together (ACT!) to prevent childhood obesity, now being offered in Spanish; LIVESTRONG^® at the Y for cancer survivors and Pedaling for Parkinson’s.
• The Seattle Y was one of 10 Ys in the country to receive funding from the Community Transformation Grants Program (CTGs) — a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention initiative — to lead efforts in south King County to ensure more healthy opportunities are available to all residents, emphasizing increased access to African American and Hispanic families.

Social
Responsibility

• The Y introduced a new income-based pricing model to support increased accessibility to Y membership and programs.
• The number of Y volunteers increased dramatically from 11,000 to nearly 14,000, serving more than 282,000 hours.
• The Alive & Free program is building a collaborative model for serving youth impacted by gangs and violence in south King County through partnerships with the cities of Auburn, Renton, Tukwila and Kent, and in partnership with Seattle Seahawks Coach Pete Carroll’s A Better Seattle. As the Street Outreach Team for the City of Seattle’s Youth Violence Prevention Initiative, Alive & Free served approximately 1,000 high-risk youth and responded to 34 critical incidents of violence involving youth.

Partnerships & Expansion

• Valued partners including schools, nonprofits, businesses, government and others are instrumental to the Y’s ability to expand, increase impact and create lasting change in the community.
• The Seattle Y developed Vision 2020, outlining key strategic goals to be achieved by 2020. To continue progress toward those goals, the Y will expand, renovate and build more facilities to increase its capacity, reach and influence. The Y is pursuing a public/private model in a number of communities.
• The Y and the City of Sammamish are partners for the voter-approved Sammamish Community & Aquatics Center, a 60,000-square-foot facility which will be owned by the city and operated by the Y.

Youth Development

• Following the success of its 2012 summer learning programs, the Y intends to increase the number of schools and students served each year, growing from three schools and 300 students to more than 12 schools and 1,200 students.
• In early learning, the Y will expand its parent/child programs, focusing on developmental steps and readiness for school. Seventy percent of caregivers to children in low-income neighborhoods are parents, friends and families, so the Y will focus on mobilizing these groups.

Healthy Living

• To equip families and individuals to avoid chronic disease through lifestyle change and social support, the Y will continue to expand its programs and services with offerings like Enhance Fitness, 50 Moving Forward, Smoking Cessation and Moving for Better Balance. The Y is also increasing its number of Workplace Wellness partners, addressing not only individual behavior, but also the workplace environment and access to health care.
• The Washington State Alliance of Ys is one of 14 to receive funds from the YMCA of the USA, which was awarded $7.9 million from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to expand the Statewide Pioneering Healthy Communities (PHC) initiative. The PHC initiative is aimed at addressing the childhood obesity epidemic through policy, systems and environmental change.

Social
Responsibility

• Seattle Y branches work to reflect the cultural diversity of local communities, creating a welcoming and inclusive environment and developing local and global social responsibility through our Global Excellence Initiative. Over the next two years, the Seattle Y is expanding the initiative to six more branches. Global Excellence Ys will focus on equity, diversity and inclusion, community engagement and international programs.
• The Y will continue its efforts to increase volunteerism and philanthropy, supporting branches’ work to more deeply engage members and participants of all ages in activities, events and programs that connect with their interests.