YMCA milestone marked by Tain pupils as world’s oldest youth organisation celebrates 180th birthday
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CHILDREN in an Easter Ross community will today celebrate the anniversary of a worldwide movement which has a strong presence in their town.
The international worldwide YMCA movement is celebrating its 180th birthday.
A larger birthday party for those children in P7 will be held on Monday (June 10) as part of their end of term transitions programme that the YMCA runs.
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Karen Begg, the children and families worker, said that this will be a neon-themed event called ‘Let’s glow crazy!’ and is open to all those 97 P7s from this year’s year group.
Graham Nutt, the senior youth and community worker for the local YMCA based in Tain, said: “Many YMCAs across the world will be celebrating this magnificent achievement of being the world’s oldest and largest youth organisation.”
There are 12,000 YMCAs across the world with over 90,000 staff and 920,000 volunteers reaching 60m-plus people and operating in over 121 different countries.
Scotland has 28 YMCA’s working with over 10,000 people throughout Scotland with 271 staff members and 208 volunteers.
In 2022, the European YMCA created a vision for 2030 where all the YMCAs will be operating under a similar four headings of Community Wellbeing, Meaningful work, Sustainable Planet and Just World.
Mr Nutt added that this is an exciting time where we can plan for the future and make a real difference to the lives of all children, young people and families within our community.
One of the long term ideas is to reduce the YMCA’s carbon footprint by installing solar panels. However this is very expensive to install so any donations would be gratefully received, he said.
Members of the community who might want to be involved with the shaping of the Tain YMCA Vision 2030 plan should contact either Graham or Karen on 01862 894252 where they can get more information.
The Tain & North Highland YMCA board and staff recently adopted this strategic plan of Vision 2030 and launched it to a group of volunteers, staff and young people who are all involved with the Tain YMCA as part of the birthday celebrations.
