The Granite Young Men'S Christian Association

Filing Period

Jun 1, 2012 to May 31, 2013

Signed

Sep 24, 2013

Return Version

2012v2.3

Gross Receipts

$15,242,402

Mission

Major Activities

Activity 2

Youth development - the y recognizes and celebrates its role as a major service provider in the area of childhood and youth development. The y is committed to increasing opportunities for youth to deepen values and build positive assets. All youth programs reinforce our core values of honesty, respect, caring and responsibility. These guided principles help children make positive choices in their lives and contribute to building strong families and communities. The y also seeks to build positive assets in youth by providing opportunities for them to engage in lifelong healthy activities with positive role models to help guide their decisions. It is proven that the more positive assets a child has, the less likely they are to engage in high risk behavior that may lead to negative health habits and anti-social behaviors. With this as a backdrop, the y is the largest provider of childcare programs in the area and serves over 1,230 children per day. A special emphasis is placed on ensuring access to programs in low income areas by providing financial assistance through grants, state aid and y fund raising. During the summer months when children are not in school, the y offers extensive day and resident camping programs for children 18 months to 15 years old. Again, this provides many of our center-city youth with a unique opportunity to participate with children from within and outside the state and country. A major emphasis of our camping program is to provide opportunities for youth to gain leadership skills by progressing from a camper to a leader-in-training (l.i.t.), to a counselor-in-training (c.i.t.), to a junior counselor and finally to a full counselor. Each year, the y employs over 425 young adults and is one of the community's largest youth employers. Through our youth programs, we are able to provide opportunities for youth development 12 months per year to build a healthy spirit, mind and body.

Activity 3

Social responsibility - the y acts as a community partner whenever possible to address critical community needs. In this context, our community has experienced a significantly higher percentage of school drop outs and lower achievements than other communities in the state. The y has taken the lead to impact this important issue by offering three special programs to reduce school dropout and close this achievement gap for youth at risk. The support tutoring and adventure for youth program (s.t.a.y.) is run in all four middle schools in manchester. The program provides a staff member in each school to tutor mentor and provide positive group work experience geared at building academic competency, social skills and a strong relationship with the school and community. The y serves 65 youth per year with over 150 referrals for the 65 slots, plus 150 alumni and family members. The y also provides a special program called strive, for suspended and expelled students. No program currently exists in manchester to support them when they are out of school. The y runs the program (in cooperation with the manchester school department) in the y facility (downtown branch) and provides an opportunity for students to complete their school work to stay on course with their studies, receive tutoring help, perform community service and learn ways to improve social skills to avoid further problems in school. Over 180 youth were served this year. The y allard center branch, located in goffstown, also partnered with the goffstown high school to offer special team building and leadership programs for their alternative education programs. We also established a collaboration with numerous other goffstown non profits to run an afterschool program for at risk middle school children in goffstown. The y start program operates in two of our center-city schools and provides quality childcare for 145 children; 85% of which are below federal poverty guidelines. English is a second language for the majority of children so the additional tutoring and homework help is critical in improving their success in school. Most families pay as little as 4.00 per week. This keeps families off of state assistance as it enables parents to work and know their children are well cared for. The y also runs a teen center to provide a long term connection to the y for children who need a positive place to come during after school hours. The center is run by staff trained to support positive youth development. In order to develop leadership skills in youth and encourage civil engagement, the y runs a model legislature at the nh state capital for over 355 high school students. This is a collaborative program with local school systems and ties into the school's curriculum on government and public policy.

Filer

EIN

02-0222248