Coming From America

Richard D. Reigner stood in the gymnasium of Highland Elementary School, in the Chicago suburb of Elgin, Ill., before an audience of only seven people, trying to sell them on the benefits of YMCA services. And they were not impressed.

As president of the Greater Elgin Area YMCA, Mr. Reigner was starting a United Way-sponsored effort to improve parental involvement in this school of 550 students. Elgin had seen its Spanish-speaking population grow from negligible to 40 percent from 2000 to 2005, and by 2006, nearly 70 percent of Highland’s students came from Hispanic immigrant families.

But on that fall day two years ago, Mr. Reigner was working a tough crowd: A recent survey had revealed that local Latinos barely knew about the YMCA.

“We didn’t have a bad reputation, but we didn’t have a good reputation, either,” Mr. Reigner recalls.

And given all the banks and other businesses avidly courting new Spanish-speaking customers, he says, many seemed suspicious of what the YMCA wanted from them, rather than what the organization might offer.

That started to change the moment Mr. Reigner told his tiny audience that he was planning a 12-day trip to visit YMCA’s in Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico to learn as much as he could about the lives of migrant families. The mere mention of the venture sparked a 20-minute question-and-answer period.

“People were very intrigued and moved that someone was going to visit their home country,” he says.

A buzz started in the school, according to Mr. Reigner and Carlos Trujillo, the school’s Hispanic liaison. Mr. Trujillo recalls: “News about Rick’s trip was what got everyone talking. They wanted to know why and when he was going. They were very impressed and excited.”

Immigration’s Impact

Mr. Reigner’s trip was part of a program called the International Leadership Institute, organized by the International Group of the YMCA of the USA, in Chicago, the coordinating body for 2,686 independent affiliates of the youth organization nationwide.

While staff members and executives of other large nonprofit organizations use travel programs as a way to fulfill global missions — Habitat for Humanity International affiliates, for example, sometimes arrange “building exchange trips” for its members to help out on overseas housing-development projects — the YMCA’s trips are unusual in their focus on helping the charity do a better job of serving immigrants to the United States.

“Migration is affecting the makeup of many of the communities that United States YMCA’s serve,” says Mike Van Haelewyn, senior associate director of the International Group of the YMCA of the USA. YMCA’s in those regions, he says, “hope to put a face on the conversation and begin to build their own credibility among immigrant communities.”

The trips to bring American Y leaders overseas are one part of a large, multifaceted effort by the YMCA of the USA to create global partnerships among its affiliates, with the goal of improving each local Y’s ability to solve the specific needs of the city or town that it serves. Y executives who return from these trips abroad have been instrumental in crafting or refining programs that reach out to immigrant families in their own backyards, say officials at the charity.

Making Connections

Mr. Reigner made his trip in April 2007. When he returned to Highland and presented his slides in the fall of that year, hundreds of parents turned out. “We could not fit everybody in that gymnasium,” he recalls.

He says his trip convinced many people that he, both as an individual and as head of a Y organization, understood their cultural concerns firsthand. Some Highland parents expressed concern that while they wanted their children to grow up in America and succeed, they didn’t want them to lose their traditional values, he says.

“I couldn’t really understand that, that first meeting standing in the gym in Elgin,” Mr. Reigner says. “Once I returned, I was able to make the connection and know exactly what they were talking about.”

Since the Y began offering overseas trips in 1994, more than 150 senior-level staff members have traveled to Asia, Europe, and North America, but the first 10 trips focused generally on creating cross-cultural relationships and working on specific youth-service projects abroad. The tight focus on migration and immigration issues, beginning with Mr. Reigner’s trip in 2007, came about in response to what local Y affiliates said they needed, according to Mr. Van Haelewyn.

He says that local YMCA’s cover their own costs for the trips — usually about $2,500 to $3,000 per person — although the Y’s headquarters may offer a subsidy of $1,000 to $1,500 for YMCA’s with limited resources. Ideal candidates for the program, Mr. Van Haelewyn says, are chief executives, vice presidents, officers who manage volunteers, or other staff members or volunteers at Y organizations who are in a position to make significant decisions or program changes once they return.

Between 10 and 20 participants go on each trip, escorted by one or two staff members of the International Group. Occasionally a Y staff member from the host country will meet and help escort the group.

Roots in History

Although relatively new, the focus on immigration issues is embedded in the YMCA’s history and mission, says Lynda Gonzales-Chavez, senior associate director of the YMCA of the USA’s International Group and leader of the overseas-trips program.

The YMCA began in London in 1844, as a response to urban social conditions created by the Industrial Revolution and its accompanying migration of workers.

“The YMCA was a direct response to English country persons coming into London in the mid-1880s,” says Ms. Gonzales-Chavez, who notes that the charity first began teaching English-as-a-second-language courses to German immigrants in Ohio in the mid-1800s. “We have a really rich history related to service in changing communities.”

While immigration is nothing new in cities like New York or Los Angeles, she notes, the sharp increase in migrant populations in suburban towns has created serious challenges.

“It’s not just about reaching the newcomer community,” she says, “but also about preparing the traditional communities to be receptive.”

That’s exactly the two-way encounter that Jarrett Royster, vice president of urban development for the George E. Simmons Branch YMCA, in Charlotte, N.C., hopes to foster in his rapidly changing neighborhood — the most diverse in greater Charlotte, he says, with a population that is 40 percent white, 30 percent black, and somewhere between 20 percent and 30 percent Hispanic (including both documented and undocumented immigrants).

“There are great challenges in terms of community-building and bridge-building,” Mr. Royster says. These, he says, include a rise in ethnic gangs and violent crimes, as well as serious tensions over perceived job competition between newly arrived Hispanics and blacks, many of whom are migrants themselves, having moved south to escape poor economic prospects in Northern cities.

Bridging the Gap

In June, Mr. Royster attended the second immigration-focused trip to Central America, led by Ms. Gonzalez-Chavez.

Although he grew up very poor in the United States, he was shocked by the level of material, physical poverty in Latin America — but also intrigued and moved by the strength of family and community values there and the urgency with which men and women in that region seek to improve their families’ prospects.

“In Honduras, I saw that the Y was a ray of hope for the kids in the village, who would go and talk to local politicians, push to get reforms to help their own community,” Mr. Royster says, noting that such effective youth activism reminded him of the American civil-rights movement of the 1960s. He says he found that fascinating compared with a complacency he often sees among young people in many of America’s neediest neighborhoods, including the one where he grew up.

But beyond the personal dimension of his travel experience, Mr. Royster came home from his trip inspired to try new programs to help bridge the gaps among various newcomer populations in metropolitan Charlotte.

Along with his YMCA’s director of youth education, he devised a “global experience curriculum” to help white, black, and Hispanic kids and teenagers learn facts about each others’ heritages, as opposed to the stereotypes and myths they hear every day.

Mr. Royster and his staff also run a program called Zumba, in which 60 adults get together to learn Latin dance forms, such as salsa and merengue. “We’ve got blacks, whites, Asians — everybody’s in that class,” he says.

The George E. Simmons Branch YMCA also now offers Spanish-language classes. Says Mr. Royster, “We’re sort of thinking of it as our official second language.”

Compare and Contrast

Mr. Reigner, of the YMCA in Elgin, Ill., says he was similarly affected both personally and professionally by his 2007 trip.

In Mexico City, he was pleasantly surprised to find that the Y facility itself was very similar and in some cases more impressive than its American counterparts. One building, he says, had a restaurant, multiple indoor and outdoor pools, attractive walkways with natural lighting and plants, a large multistory foyer, and other features.

“Back in Elgin, Mexican immigrants had told me the Y was too expensive for them to join, and I didn’t really get that until I saw it with my own eyes,” he says.

He learned that memberships in full-facility YMCA’s in Mexico were relatively expensive compared with local incomes, but those fees paid for extensive programs to serve the most disadvantaged neighborhoods. The Y’s he visited in Guatemala and Honduras were much different — tin-roof structures over dirt floors, immediately telegraphing the extreme poverty of those regions. In each country, he met hundreds of young people who told of trying to migrate to the United States in search of work, only to be caught and sent back.

In the effort to connect with Elgin’s growing number of Hispanic residents, certainly other, more obvious efforts at the YMCA affiliate have helped, such as adding enough bilingual staff members to serve Spanish-speaking members, Mr. Reigner says.

But he says he regards his trip as a prime reason the Greater Elgin Area YMCA is now “more engaged with the local Hispanic population and is now seen as a trusted organization in the community.” He says the Y has reached more than 350 Spanish-speaking households through its programs and services at Highland Elementary and was recently asked to help a local high school with a large number of Hispanic students reach out to parents.

“Rick’s trip really did get things started” and helped increase parental engagement in the school, says Mr. Trujillo. After the excitement caused by Mr. Reigner’s slide show, Mr. Trujillo says, the school’s Parent-Teacher Organization grew from just three or four families to more than 20 last year, and it is moving toward 40 participating families this year.

Previously, Mr. Trujillo says, Spanish-speaking parents would talk only to him — and then, only by telephone — when they needed to communicate with the school. But today, he says, a great many parents feel a sense of ownership in the school and are comfortable enough to speak to anyone in the principal’s office or visit in person. In addition, he says, school attendance rates have spiked, and student grades have improved.

As plans are under way for the Parent-Teacher Organization’s annual open house next month, he says, “everyone is calling to find out how they can help, whether they can bring tables or chairs, or help with fliers. We expect that everybody will show up.”