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River Valley Regional YMCA
Youth Program

The YMCA Youth Mentoring Program is much more than an after-school club where young people and teens can “hang out”.  It is a social program run by the YMCA that is both fun and educational.  The YMCA has learned from past experience that working with youth and teens requires a balance of fun activities, incentives, and education through direct coaching and “teachable moments”.  With this in mind, the Youth Mentoring Program is a new direction for our traditional YMCA Youth Program that we have run for years. The program name is being changed from the old “YMCA Youth Program” to “YMCA Youth Mentoring Program” to reflect the change in philosophy from “a place that kids are welcome and have something to do” to “A place where kids are welcome and have something to do... AND to reflect that there is commitment to the end result; meaning that the program participants’ (kids’) success in life is the ultimate goal. 

The program will target kids in the immediate area that the YMCA serves, ages 9-16, who are from an economically disadvantaged family background.  The YMCA staff feels that this new direction for our existing youth programming will have an immediate and positive impact on the community and immediate area that is served by the YMCA. We feel that this new program will most certainly meet a need that we are seeing on this end of town for more social outreach to local youth. Starting in the summer and continuing throughout the school year, the YMCA Youth Mentoring Program will allow area youth, free of charge, to become part of the program. The kids will meet in the Pickelner Arena. “Home base” will be the mezzanine area of the arena. The kids and counselors will then have daily physical activities at the YMCA such as basketball, swimming, roller skating, etc. We’re also planning on learning activities such as Good Life Choices, and Educational Opportunities Post-Graduation, and Goal Setting.  We’ll also provide opportunities for the kids to volunteer and learn about community service.

The program’s overall impact is that of helping our area’s youth through daily mentoring and teaching by YMCA staff and volunteers. The program’s observable and immediate product is to get kids “off the street” and into a caring, nurturing, supervised program. However, more importantly, the program is designed to give each child an opportunity to grow in Spirit, Mind and Body, for each child to learn about the pitfalls of drugs, gangs, smoking, alcohol, and to give kids an opportunity to become successful in life through daily mentoring (and other learning experiences) that they can use to plot their own course which will help them become a successful part of our community. We’ll also be using this program for values clarification (the YMCA Character Counts Program) which educates kids on the subjects of Respect, Responsibility, Caring and Honesty.

For more information:

www.rvrymca.org