In North America, the YMCA is sometimes perceived to be primarily a community sports facility ; in Great Britain, the YMCA is sometimes perceived to be primarily a place for homeless young people ; however, it offers a broad range of programmes such as sports, personal fitness, child care, overnight camping, employment readiness programmes, training programmes, advice services, immigrant services, conference centres and educational activities as methods of promoting its values.

In the United States, the YMCA parent / child programmes under the umbrella programme called Y-Guides, ( originally called YMCA Indian Guides, Princess, Braves and Maidens ) have provided structured opportunities for fellowship, camping, and community-building activities ( including craft-making and community service ) for several generations of parents and kids in kindergarten through third grade.

It is also used as a starting point for ramblers to climb the Mourne Mountains and has a YMCA centre including camping facilities.

Originally developed through the YMCA and later governed by the Boys ' Work Board, the TUXIS program for boys aged 15 to 17 focused on Christian values, leadership, the outdoors, and camping.

Sumner Dudley, long active in both the New York and New Jersey YMCA movements, was asked in 1884 to take " young honor YMCA members " camping.

* YMCA Camp Cosby, a camping site in Alpine, Talladega County, Alabama

During the 1980s, attempts were made by the state YMCA to include girls in camping activities.

Northeastern University ( Boston, Massachusetts ) began out of a YMCA in Boston, and Franklin University began as the YMCA School of Commerce.

In 1919, YMCA began their Storer Camps chain around the country.

Youngstown State University, the primary institution of higher learning in the Youngstown-Warren metropolitan area, traces its origins to a local YMCA program that began offering college-level courses in 1908.

The North Galveston County YMCA began in 1993 and later moved into the Perry YMCA.

In 1873, Grossmith and his father began joint tours of humorous recitations and comic sketches at literary institutes and public halls, to church groups and to branches of the YMCA all over England and even in Scotland and Wales.

He began work as a YMCA summer camp counselor ; he was very popular with the children, who nicknamed him " Nemo ".

Though he had been writing since he was a child ( winning a YMCA contest at age 14 ), he began taking writing courses at the University of Victoria in 1970, receiving his Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing there in 1974.

By the turn of the century, a nationalist movement began to take shape in the form of Young Men's Buddhist Associations ( YMBA ), modelled on the YMCA, as religious associations were allowed by the colonial authorities.

Stu Hart began amateur wrestling when he joined the YMCA in Edmonton in 1929.

While studying at Korea University, Shin began teaching at the university, along at the Seoul Central YMCA, various colleges, and many police and military institutions.

There he worked at a local steel mill and began working out at the Duncan YMCA.

He began working for the YMCA as boys ’ work secretary in Saskatoon in 1922, later becoming an Army physical education instructor.

" There, being smaller and younger than his classmates, he found himself a target for bullies and young gang-members until he studied boxing and self-defense at the local YMCA and began to successfully fight back.

Humiliated, the young Siciliano joined the YMCA and began to do numerous exercise routines, becoming obsessed with strength.

Southeastern began as a series of classes offered by the YMCA of the District of Columbia in 1879.

His views on race began when, as a college student, he toured Poland with the YMCA.

Hornung's only child, a son, was killed at the Second Battle of Ypres on 6 July 1915 ; Hornung then began work with the YMCA in France.

Pulis began his career at Bristol Rovers where he joined their school of football excellence in Eastville from Newport YMCA.

Before the YMCA began to admit females in the early 1960s, swimming trunks were not even allowed in the pools, and high school swimming classes for boys sometimes had similar policies, citing the impracticality of providing and maintaining sanitary swimming gear and clogging swimming pools ' filtration systems with lint fibers from the swimsuits.

He began wrestling at age six at a YMCA after-school program and grew up idolizing Olympic wrestler Wayne Wells.

In 1885, Camp Baldhead ( later known as Camp Dudley ), the first residential camp in North America, was established by A. Sanford and Sumner F. Dudley, both of whom worked for the YMCA.

Springfield College was founded in 1885 as an international training school for YMCA Professionals, while one of the two schools that eventually became Concordia University — started from night courses offered at the Montreal YMCA.

New public buildings also were constructed ; the first public library came in 1873, the YMCA was built in 1885, and Moline Public Hospital opened in 1896.

Westport is home to Camp Dudley YMCA, the oldest summer camp in continuous operation in the United States, founded in 1885 by Sumner F. Dudley, moved to Westport in 1891.

Since then, the museum has expanded several times, to the south into the red brick former YMCA, to the north into the 1885 Ballantine House, and in 1990, to the west into an existing acquired building.

Founded in 1885 as the Young Men's Christian Association department of the School for Christian Workers in Springfield, the school originally specialized in preparing young men to become General Secretaries of YMCA organizations in a two-year program.

Just a few years after opening its doors to the first eighteen students in 1885, the YMCA Training School could boast an international reputation as a pioneer in teaching and scholarship related to physical education class, sports medicine, physical therapy, physiology of exercise, biomechanics, wellness, the training of YMCA executives, and many other fields.

Founded in 1885 by Sumner F. Dudley, Camp Dudley YMCA is the oldest continually running boys camp in the United States.

One of the earliest college basketball games in the United States occurred at Geneva College on April 8, 1893 when the Geneva College Covenanters defeated the New Brighton YMCA.

The College became Sir George Williams University ( SGWU ) in 1948, when it received a university charter from the provincial government, though it remained the education arm of the Montreal YMCA.

Until the 1970s when women first started coming to YMCA facilities, wearing clothing of any type in YMCA pools was strictly forbidden.

The two men met in the early 1920s, when Joe Friday was a speaker at a local YMCA banquet for Fathers and Sons that Harold Keltner had arranged.

The world's first recorded college basketball game occurred in the city on April 8, 1893 when the intramural team from Geneva College defeated the New Brighton YMCA.

The Clerk of the Court sits with the Court when it is in session and follows protocol as outlined in the Rules of Procedure for the YMCA Youth Supreme Court.

Without doubt, Nomads ’ most successful season was 1980 – 81 when they won seven trophies including the Welsh Intermediate Cup, beating Newport YMCA in the final, and the Clwyd League without losing a game.

The organization, an early American organization dedicated to Christian evangelism, was founded in 1899 at the YMCA in Janesville, Wisconsin by two traveling businessmen who met by chance when they shared a hotel room at the Central House Hotel in Boscobel, Wisconsin and refined their idea in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin.

The Fringe did not benefit from any official organization until 1951, when students of the University of Edinburgh set up a drop-in centre in the YMCA, where cheap food and a bed for the night were made available to participating groups.

In 2009, YMCA was entered into the Guinness World Book of Records when over 44, 000 people danced to the song with Village People singing live at the Sun Bowl game in Texas.

The university's origins trace back to 1908, when the local branch of the YMCA established a school of law within the Youngstown Association School.

The Devilles leaped to further local prominence when they won a weekly Battle of the Bands contest at Memphis's T. Walker Lewis YMCA, finally beating Bobby and the Originals, who had won the previous nineteen weeks.

Manthena Nikkheel in 1920 and his first exposure to sport was in 1935 when he was the assistant physical director at the West End YMCA in Toronto.

Many leather people went to the Embarcadero YMCA ( at this YMCA doing weight training while wearing nothing but gym shoes and a jockstrap as well as nude swimming were both allowed until 1975, when women were enabled to become members of the YMCA ).

Leather people who worked out at the Embarcadero YMCA took advantage of the opportunity to get together with sailors when they came into town and rented rooms at the adjacent Embarcadero YMCA Hotel.

He was chairman of the Norwegian Polytechnic Society from 1868 to 1869, and the first chairman of the Norwegian branch of the YMCA when it was established in 1880.

Trench Pen was developed into Trench Town when the colonial government's Central Housing Authority ( CHA ) initiated a model township project which included owner occupied housing, rental social housing, schools, a theatre ( The Ambassador ), a park ( Vin Lawrence Park ), YMCA & YWCA, health clinic and fire station.

The university ’ s operations date to 1919, when Northeastern University opened a branch campus in the YMCA building in Providence, Rhode Island.