Leaders from the Bloomington-Normal YMCA recently attended national advocacy days in Washington, D.C., meeting with the offices of U.S. Reps. Darin LaHood, a Republican, and Eric Sorensen, a Democrat.
“We had four national legislative priorities through the YMCA that Y-USA, out of Chicago, puts together through their legislative offices,” said Patrick Mainieri, chief operating officer of the Bloomington-Normal location, in an interview on WGLT’s Sound Ideas.
"The first one that we go out every year and talk about is childcare funding, affordable childcare, ensuring that we’re asking our legislation to support the highest funding inside of the Child Care and Development Block Grant, as well as ensuring Head Start and 21st Century Community Learning Center’s grants are fully funded at the highest level possible.”
Amid federal funding cuts by the Trump administration is cuts to childcare. While childcare organizations across the country and state of Illinois deal with the freeze, Mainieri said the Bloomington-Normal YMCA is fortunate to be largely self-funded.
“But our friends over at Boys and Girls Club, they definitely received quite a bit of state and federal funding through that, especially that block grant that comes through annually,” he said.
“Ironically enough, we learned that that funding has been frozen for the last five years—and so we were trying to ask [legislators] to increase that."
Mainieri said it's a funding source that is dedicated to ensuring quality for before- and after-school programs.
Health promotion
The second national priority for YMCA is health promotion funding.
Mainieri said that includes funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] to promote the YMCA’s priorities of safety around water and drowning prevention.
The CDC is another department that has gone through waves of cuts, according to NPR.
“We are fortunate to host a community water coalition that includes both the Town of Normal and City of Bloomington, as well as some other providers in town that just want to make sure that drowning—which is the leading cause of death for children ages zero to four—that we can definitely focus on ensuring children feel safe around the water. But we’re also running into adults needing to learn how to swim,” he said.
According to the CDC, drowning disproportionately affects Black and Indigenous children, which has been a focus of the YMCA's water safety initiatives. YMCA also relies on the CDC to provide data to support initiatives on reducing rates of chronic diseases like diabetes, hypertension and cancer.
In Washington, D.C., the YMCA team met with legislators about cuts to health departments around the county. They met directly with LaHood and with Sorensen’s staff.
“They understand the need. What I was able to pick up on is that the horizon is ever moving for them right now and they are having to be responsive in the minute, as well as because they are often learning things at the same time that the public is learning things,” Mainieri said. “We just have to continue to make sure that our sources are strong and stabilized.”
YMCA also supports mental health legislation, including a co-sponsored Community Mental Wellness and Resiliency Act. Mainieri said he learned on the trip that loneliness, which the bill would address, causes anxiety as debilitating as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
The YMCA at home
B.J. Wilken, CEO of the Bloomington-Normal YMCA, acknowledged funding and staff can still fall short at the local organization. He said the annual Strong Kids campaign has a goal of $400,000, the same as last year.
One target is youth development.
“So, in all our programs around youth, we want to make sure that we’re providing those social and emotional connections, that social and emotional learning with our kids, and we want to make sure that we provide programs at a cost that people can afford,” said Wilken. “At the Y, we don’t turn people away due to the inability to pay, and it’s an important aspect of who we are and what we do.”
The Strong Kids campaign shares the national priorities of addressing drowning prevention and loneliness. Altogether, the campaign represents the YMCA’s core values.
“It’s part of our mission, and we want to make sure that we’re providing those places and spaces for our kids,” Wilken said.
On top of national priorities, the Bloomington-Normal location is looking to expand on ideas of its own after increased attendance through its doors.
Wilken said YMCA has seen a seven-fold increase in attendance since opening their new facility nearly four years ago.
“It’s certainly magnified it exponentially. We can talk from membership to programs and everything in between, but there’s no question,” he said.
At its prior location in downtown Bloomington, the Y had approximately 2,000 members. That has expanded to 14,500 members, including 1,700 kids who learned to swim last year.
“When we set out to build this, we did not necessarily think that we would get to the levels that we are at, and I would attribute all of that to really our staff,” said Wilken. “The staff that have made connections with our program participants, the staff that show up every day with a smiling face, the staff that have strategies around intentional connections, of forging those connections in the community.”
The next hill to climb for YMCA is mobile programming. It would bring opportunities of the Y to those without the ability to get to the location on St. Joseph Drive.
“The board’s going to talk a little bit about that, and they’re going to get briefed on some of the ideas and thoughts that we have about being able to take programming outside the walls,” said Wilken. “Space is an issue at the current Y, believe it or not. After four years, we’re out of space, and so there is some capacity to expand.”
A primary area YMCA would capitalize on would be its swimming training.
“So, if you imagine maybe the Y coming up to an apartment complex, or some area, some pool in the community, where we’re able to pull up and have swim instructors come out and teach kids to swim, particularly in underserved areas,” he said. “But then how do we also teach kids to swim in, maybe, private pools, that backyard pool and those types of things.”
