YMCA Stories

When Natalie Jacobsen toured Y Academy at University Hills, every teacher greeted her warmly, and she knew it was the right place to enroll her child Nola in early childhood education. Since then, she has noticed Nola's confidence increase, as she learns and grows in the warm welcoming environment of the Y. 

Joella Baumann knows what it feels like to drop your kid off at a child care facility and wonder if they’ll be well taken care of. She knows that the expense of summertime child care programs can be a barrier to securing high-quality care you can trust. She found the YMCA Power Scholars program for her son Amari, and now she never worries. She knows that, at the Y, Amari is not only getting warm care but also academic support, social emotional learning, enriching activities and nutritious meals. 

When Victoria Cardenas moved to Denver from Mexico City in 1997, she came to the Downtown Denver YMCA to learn to swim, and she’s been coming to the Y ever since. These days, she takes weekly cycling classes at the Arvada-Duncan YMCA, where she gets not only a great workout but also social connection and life lessons. For Victoria, the Y has become a place to find community and get inspired to be her best self. 

For three years, Alice Dent needed a walker to move around. She had health conditions that affected her mobility, so she joined the Y’s Blood Pressure Self-Monitoring Program and Diabetes Prevention Program. Now, she uses only her canes to get around. The Y has been her place to improve her health, increase her physical activity, decrease her stress and gain a new community of support.   

YMCA Youth Sports Director Billy Merryman was raised by a single mom who relied on YMCA Youth Sports and other YMCA youth programming at the Littleton Y not only to fill child care gaps but to help instill in him the values of respect, responsibility and caring. Now, Billy has three kids of his own, and, like his mom, he’s a single parent — who leans on his Y for support. If you ask him why he works so hard for the Y, he says: “I do it for the moms like mine, for the families like mine — because I was that kid and I’m that parent and I wouldn’t be here without the Y.”