Opportunities for students are just as important to their growth and development as access to basic needs services. The City Connects team understands the value of partnering with organizations that create opportunities for fun, exploration, and support for students.
One such partner, particularly in Massachusetts, is the YMCA. For years, City Connects Coordinators and YMCA personnel have combined their organizations’ knowledge, resources, and acumen to support students across the state.
“When the YMCA identifies a child or family in need of specific services, we communicate these updates to the City Connects Coordinator to ensure that the school is aware and can prepare any services that the student may need at school the next day,” says Charity Lezama, Executive Director of the YMCA of the North Shore in Salem. City Connects has been a part of Salem Public Schools since 2017.
Lezama ensures the YMCA’s team is in close communication with City Connects Coordinators.“I have attended meetings with City Connects to introduce our team, our programs, and to offer our YMCA’s support for Salem families,” she adds.
Elsewhere in the state, the work of school counselors such as Megan McShane exemplify the close working relationship between City Connects and the YMCA.
McShane is the City Connects Coordinator at the St. Columbkille Partnership School in Brighton, a neighborhood in Boston. Her campus includes students from pre-K through middle school. She’s been a Coordinator since 2021.
“The YMCA has community outreach workers who proactively reach out to me at the start of the school year, as well as when summer program registration is beginning,” McShane says. “When I’m managing many partnerships while also supporting students, it’s so nice to get a call or email from my YMCA partners.” McShane adds that the YMCA’s personnel also create program-related fliers that she includes in her weekly newsletters. The fliers display promotions for programs for sports such as soccer, basketball, and swimming.
“Sometimes, in passing, students will discuss having played basketball [at the YMCA] over the weekend, and I’ll think, Wow, I didn’t realize you were connected to that,” McShane says. “The YMCA knows my students and families as well as I do.”
The two organizations also band together when a student has more significant needs for support. Lezama describes a time when a student was experiencing mental health struggles acute enough that he required professional psychological help. The student’s mother faced cultural barriers to accepting certain types of healthcare for her son.
“Through our partnership with City Connects, we collaborated to provide the student’s mother with compassionate guidance and build trust in the care process,” Lezama says. “After working together closely, we were able to connect her son to the necessary resources while respecting her cultural perspective. Today, both mother and son remain actively involved with the YMCA, and both are thriving.”
There is power in coordinated support to help families overcome barriers and find, as Lezama puts it, “meaningful stability.”
What could the upcoming years hold for this partnership? McShane hopes to see more teen-centric programs for her campus’ older middle-school students while Lezama is already seeing growth in the support that this partnership is bringing to pre-K students.
“This year,” Lezama says, “City Connects has expanded its reach to support the Salem Preschool Partnership. Through this expansion, community-based organizations such as the YMCA will now have access to a shared City Connects Coordinator who is dedicated to work with preschoolers, connecting them to services tailored to meet their early developmental needs, services that will help them as they transition into Salem Public Schools.”
Partners like the YMCA help City Connects to provide the right service at the right time, over time. They ensure that in addition to academic and basic needs supports, students have safe, joyful, meaningful relationships and activities inside and outside of school. Together, City Connects and its partners ensure every student experiences opportunities to learn and thrive.
