Post submitted by NYCD16-INDIVISIBLE member Kate Washton
Early this spring, NYCD16 Indivisible invited the new director of the YWCA of Yonkers to speak at a meeting. Charlie Knight, the director, spoke about the Y’s programs, and put out a volunteer sheet. As someone with old childhood connections to YWCA’s and a background in child development, I decided to volunteer and was particularly interested in their early child development program.
When I went down to the Y, which is located at 87 South Broadway, the first thing they wanted help with was renovating their old, unusable and unsafe playground. To that end , we created a Go Fund Me campaign (https://www.gofundme.com/
In the fall, I will be working with staff to create some new programs and to support the current ones. Volunteers are welcome here as well.
The Y has partnered with Kaboom, a foundation that provides playground equipment, but the Y is responsible for site preparation, which is the major expense. Two trees whose roots are coming up through the pavement have to come down and the asphalt has to be taken up before a new foundation can be put down. When the funds are available, Kaboom requires community volunteers to pair with their volunteers to actually build the playground. We hope that, when the call goes out for these volunteers some of you will be interested in helping out! So keep your eyes peeled for announcements on this in the future.
There are also some very concrete things that are needed right now which would helpful: board games, chess sets (they would love to get a chess club going, and if anyone is interested in helping to start that, please email me), and puzzles. Computers are desperately needed for the after school program, so if anyone is getting rid of an old computer, please think about donating it to the Y. You can reach out to me through the group email.
Kate Washton
NYCD16.Indivisible.group@gmail.com