Our Charitable Purpose

Our Values

• Caring
• Respect
• Honesty
• Responsibility
• Inclusiveness

Why the Y Matters

As a charity, the YMCA provides vital community services that are having a positive impact on some of Canada’s most pressing social issues—from chronic disease to unemployment, social isolation, poverty, inequality and more.

Central to our success are:

• The people who unite behind our mission and bring their many talents to our work;
• The safe and welcoming places we provide—from health facilities to classrooms to newcomer centres—that foster a sense of community;
• The comprehensive community-based programs that provide the extra skills, opportunities and confidence that many individuals and families need to achieve their full potential.
• Our advocacy for health promoting public policy that fosters a sense of belonging; and
• The philosophy that guides our actions, a holistic approach premised on the building blocks of the social determinants of health, harm reduction, the stages of change, and developmental-appropriateness

These three critical resources, people, places and programs, come together at the YMCA to create a sense of belonging to a supportive network that has proven time and time again to help our members and program participants achieve their personal development goals, be they physical, mental, social and/or emotional.

For some the impact can be truly transformational and can have an enormous ripple effect on those around them. While we celebrate each of these personal achievements—it is the scale at which this happens that makes Canada’s YMCAs truly unique. Last year we served 2.25 million Canadians in communities from coast to coast. This broad reach—and the fact that we’ve been doing this work for more than 160 years—are all part of the YMCA’s broader story of how we are building healthy communities.