How the YMCA Tapped into Centuries of Strength to Feed Americans During the Pandemic

Even before the pandemic, there was pervasive hunger in the United States. But, unlike the virus that has disrupted our lives, hunger goes largely unseen, yet its impact is profound. One in six children in America don’t know where their next meal is coming from. The YMCA’s hunger relief programs serve tens of thousands of healthy meals every day not only to kids, but to adults in every corner of America. Wherever you see a Y, there are hungry people nearby relying on it. Which means, streetscapes in wealthy suburbs, a rural villages, and urban neighborhoods ... they all have hungry people.

Stories of hunger are everywhere, according to Stacy McDaniel, Manager of Movement Engagement & Food Programs as well as the National Spokesperson for the YMCA of the USA:

Kids in Washington, DC whose school closure cut off their food supply
An upper-middle class woman in Minnesota who had never faced food insecurity before and had no awareness of the Y’s safety net
Immigrant populations in Florida who leverage the Y to help create community gardens.

McDaniel and her team were met with a challenge that tested the resilience of the 200-year old institution.

Food insecurity spiked in 2020 when the pandemic forced businesses and schools shut down. Kids who were dependent on schools for their meals were suddenly cut-off as the world went virtual. Adults had to make up the difference while also navigating the blurry lines between home life and work life. On top of all that, resources that the Y used like restaurants, transportation networks, and suppliers were either closed or significantly constrained. The YMCA’s own infrastructure was not spared. COVID mandates across the States forced YMCA buildings to shutter and employees to be furloughed.

While many would see this as a collective setback, McDaniel and the YMCA team adopted a mindset aligned with the reinventing resilience model. The model turns popular, deficit-based thinking about resilience on its head. Typically, the goal after experiencing a “setback” is to return to where you started. It’s the “get up after being knocked down” model. But that model assumes that the point where we got knocked down is worth returning to. In the case of the YMCA, they couldn’t simply get up and keep going. The context had changed overnight. While they could ‘bounce back,’ there was no ‘back’ to bounce to. So, instead, the organization had to find a new landing spot. And while looking for it, it grew through the challenge.

What happened next was amazing. Stacy and her team looked at the situation and chose to see possibility and not problems. The need to feed people remained, and the YMCA had to figure out how to adapt quickly to meet a sharply increased need with sharply reduced resources all within a volatile, uncertain, confusing, and ambiguous environment.

The YMCA formed in 1840’s London as a refuge for men who needed an escape from the chaotic streets of the day. Over the decades, the Y has scaled-up its capability to provide safe and healthy spaces for civil rights activists, immigrants, the economically disadvantaged, and others. It has a network of thousands of YMCA chapters and tens of thousands of staff and volunteers. The organization solves complex logistical problems to fulfill its mission, and it’s been doing that for hundreds of years. By spending a lot of time preparing over the years, the YMCA had found a way to stockpile resilience.

“This was our time” McDaniel said. “While we never could have predicted the pandemic, we had the pieces in place. And this was it. This was go time for us. We never would have wished for this, but it was a time to leverage all of that hard work we had done before and all of the relationship building.”

The Osage Prairie YMCA in Nevada, Missouri exemplifies the collective resilience of the organization. Nevada is a very rural community, and the YMCA there has just one full times staff. “...and I just want to emphasize...one guy!" McDaniel said. The local schools closed due to COVID and therefore were unable to offer meals to kids. But, summoning Y’s centuries of determination, he just wasn't going to take no for an answer. He saw possibilities where others saw problems.

Like water carving a new river through the landscape, he mobilized volunteers and partnered with the local grocery store. Volunteers helped register local citizens in need of food. The grocery store provided a truckload of food each week. Other volunteers handed out bundles of food every Saturday morning. The collective effort of the Osage Prairie community (led by one full-time staff member) provided 2,000 kids with a week's worth of food every Saturday morning.

Memphis Tennessee is one of the more impoverished communities in the YMCA network. Prior to the pandemic, the school district relied on a centralized commercial kitchen to feed more than 110,000 students across 214 schools. When the pandemic hit and the kitchen was forced to close, they called the YMCA. Overnight, the Y stepped in to help tens of thousands of kids obtain meals. The creative and logistical effort was significant. The Y worked with the city of Memphis who agreed to allow their workers and vans help distribute the meals. Additionally, area churches and community centers in low income communities stepped up to stage and store meals as well as hand them out.

At the Monroe Family YMCA in Michigan, staff was told on a Friday that the schools were going to shut down. The Y served about 100 kids in the after school program, so they knew they had to pivot in order to continue serving them. So over the weekend, they brokered partnerships for church kitchens. They also obtained the use of the Lay-Z-Boy factory kitchen. So, they were able to start scaling up meal production so that by Monday, they were able to hand out 1000 meals. McDaniel credits YMCA staff and volunteers for making strong, long-standing partnerships and community relationships for these success stories.

Possibilities emerge when we have a clear view of the situation. Acknowledging the reality of the moment (vs. getting stuck wishing it were different) enables the kind of creative and earnest thinking the YMCA has been doing for over 200 years. The pandemic tested the immense stockpile of resilience the Y has accumulated, and the organization was able to deliver on its mission under extreme circumstances.

“Did you ever think all of the work, all of the support systems, the connections, and the network that we built was made for this moment?” Stacy McDaniel wondered aloud with a peer mentor.