Over the years, however, the Y has changed. It has let go of its religious focus on young men. Now, anyone can join. It has dropped its housing facilities and become deeply involved in trying to fulfill the needs of its various communities.

Each Y is independently operated and managed by local boards of directors, so each Y meets the specific needs of the community it serves.

For example, at the South Valley Family YMCA, which serves 6,000 members with a staff of 115, there is an on-site teen center used yearly by hundreds of teens like Shaina Knepler-Foss, a 16-year-old Leland High School student, who was recently named the YMCA's Teen Volunteer of the Year. She leads a teen leadership class for the Y.

Besides leadership activities, the teen center for middle- and high-school students has an array of things to do, including drop-in recreation, art projects, performances, dances, parties and more. The teen center features two large screen televisions, a pool table, Ping-Pong and computers.

Ys also provide childcare, adult education, physical fitness, language classes, and the national organization as a whole has earned the recognition of the legislature as an outstanding source for helping young people succeed.

For the second year in a row, YMCAs in the United States earned the No. 1 spot on The Nonprofit Times' Top 100 list of nonprofits as the largest charitable, not-for-profit organization in the United States.

And all the Ys collectively earned $4.7 billion in revenue in their most recent fiscal year, an increase of $385 million over the previous year.

"We are so successful because of the very strong leadership of the volunteers who serve on YMCA boards and the dedication of our staffs who enthusiastically carry on the Y's mission of strengthening and enriching the development of individuals and families through quality programs and services that build a healthy spirit, mind and body for all," says Dave Thornton, CEO of the Santa Clara County YMCA. Thornton has been with the YMCA for 29 years.

Nancy Grove, a lifelong Almaden resident and associate executive director of the South Valley YMCA, says "there's an impression that the Y is just an adult workout gym, but we offer a full range of activities for the whole family."

The emphasis on family is a shift since The Young Men's Christian Association was founded in London 160 years ago on June 6, 1844. Its mission was to offer Bible study and prayer to help young men improve the poor quality of their lives at the time.

The founder, George Williams, enlisted a group of fellow dry goods salesmen to form the first YMCA at a time when the growth of railroads and centralization of commerce and industry were bringing many rural young men who needed jobs into the big cities like London and Boston, where they lived in unhealthy conditions during the Industrial Revolution.

In 1866, the New York YMCA adopted a fourfold purpose: "The improvement of the spiritual, mental, social and physical condition of young men."

The YMCA's online "Brief History" notes that the idea of the Y, which began among evangelicals, was unusual because it crossed the rigid lines that separated the different churches and social classes. This openness was a trait that would lead eventually to including in all men, women and children into the Y, regardless of race, religion or nationality. This would eventually fulfill Williams's goal of meeting the social needs in the community.

Since then, the YMCA has spread to 119 countries around the world from Albania to Vietnam.

The first Y in San Jose opened in 1867. Today, the YMCA of Santa Clara Valley has seven branches and serves more than 100,000 residents year-round in childcare, health, aquatics, fitness and teen centers. Programs are accessible to all regardless of financial resources because scholarships are available.

Dave Tatsuno, who will be 92 in March, has served on the Y's county board for 50 years. He first walked into a YMCA in San Francisco when he was a teenager in the 1920s.

"My parents were still in Japan and my guardian wasn't taking very good care of me. I was lonely, and the Y had programs that I was interested in. I've been involved ever since," Tatsuno says. "The Y was my father and mother."

Tatsuno became a leader of the YMCA boys clubs and served on the board in San Francisco's Japantown before he became a student at UC­Berkeley.

During World War II, Tatsuno was evacuated to the Topaz relocation camp in Utah where he helped start a YMCA "behind the barbed wire." YMCA staff members worked secretly in U.S. internment camps that held 110,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. Their work consisted of clubs and camping for the youngsters in the camps.

After the war and his move to San Jose, Tatsuno rededicated himself to serving youth through the YMCA in memory of his son who had died during a tonsillectomy. He has traveled more than 250,000 miles for the YMCA attending national and international meetings.

Tatsuno's example of healthy living is highlighted by his daily 1/4-mile swim at the Y. He has logged 1,675 miles to date. And his enthusiasm for aquatic activities includes encouraging the beginning of a scuba diving class at the Y that trained more than 6,000 people, including this writer.

In the 1970s, the living facilities that had been a part of the Y from its beginning—and were celebrated in song by the Village People's hit, "YMCA"—began to be phased out nationwide with a boom in construction of up-to-date buildings and equipment to meet the changing needs of local communities.

Childcare for working parents, an extension of what the Ys had done informally for years, expanded in 1983 and quickly joined health and fitness and camping as a major source of YMCA income. The South Valley Y has had childcare programs at eight schools in the Almaden Valley, but recently announced school closings will impact the current arrangements. "We will be working out how to provide services for everyone who needs them," Grove says.

Providing financial support for parents who can't afford childcare is an important objective for newly appointed South Valley Executive Director Rick Valdez. The annual fundraising campaign just began with the local goal of $175,000. The money will go toward subsidizing teen programs of tutoring and enrichment as well as endowing day camp and summer camps for needy children.

The Y's primary youth program today is Adventure Guides, for children from 5 to 9 years old and their parents. This program replaces Indian Guide and Indian Princess clubs, which were for fathers and their sons or daughters. Trailblazers is an extension of Adventure Guides for fathers to work side by side with their preteens to help, encourage and empower them to do their best.

With growing public interest in the field of youth development, the YMCA of the USA has collaborated with The Search Institute (an independent nonprofit organization whose mission is to provide leadership, knowledge, and resources to promote healthy children, youth and communities) in studying the issue of what contributes to healthy children and prevents youthful problems.

The research identified 40 personal assets that correlate with pro-social and healthy behavior in youngsters and discourage antisocial and unhealthy behavior. Three of the external assets are: family support (high levels of love and support), positive family communication (children are willing to seek advice and counsel from their parents) and other adult relationships (support from adults other than their parents).

Three of the internal assets are: achievement expectation and motivation (children are motivated to do well in school and other activities), children are engaged in learning (children are responsive, attentive, and actively engaged in learning) and there is a stimulating activity and homework (parents and teachers encourage children to explore and engage in stimulating activities and children do homework when it's assigned).

Based on the research, The Search Institute states: "The more assets a youth has, the more likely he or she is to behave well, the less likely to engage in risky behavior." This not only provides a road map for Ys to follow in shaping healthy children, families and communities, but also has confirmed for YMCA leadership the effectiveness of its youth programs.

The research also showed a wider focus than had been thought possible. It doesn't matter if a program consists of sports, music, a teen center, mentoring or aerobics, or if it's aimed at reducing teen pregnancy, smoking or crime. If it provides one or more of those developmental assets, it will reduce the overall risk of any kind of negative behavior, and raise the likelihood of positive behavior.

With the YMCA of Santa Clara County acting as the lead agency, Project Cornerstone was founded by the Youth Alliance of Santa Clara County, a collaboration of the YMCA, YWCA, Big Brothers, Big Sisters, Boys & Girls Clubs, Campfire USA, Estrella Family Services, Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts.

Project Cornerstone's mission is to build strong local communities starting with the young to create an asset-rich country, to help youngsters gain those assets by making preteens and adolescents the top priority.

Pamela Von Wiegand has been involved in Project Cornerstone since 1997, when she gave a workshop at the "Summit for Youth" at De Anza College. The members of that workshop helped form the nucleus of Project Cornerstone.

She says an initial study of 7,000 seventh- through 12th-graders in the Santa Clara Valley found a woeful lack of the critical assets, with youngsters averaging only 18.2 of the possible 40 assets.

"We will be presenting our second survey of over 15,000 students including fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders at the Y's Asset Champions Breakfast, Feb. 17. This time all the schools have been enthusiastic supporters because they've learned there is a better way than simply reacting to children and youth as problems," Von Wiegand says.

In addition, the YMCA of the USA recently announced a multiyear initiative called "Activate America," to create community solutions to obesity and chronic disease with a rigorous, 10-year improvement and community leadership project to fulfill its charitable mission of improving the health and well-being of all Americans, including children.

At a subcommittee hearing, U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin said, "I commend the YMCA for its leadership in building healthier communities. Many Americans look to the YMCA to provide a place for physical activity and support healthier lifestyles in their communities. The YMCA is taking one of the many steps needed to prevent chronic diseases and reduce health care costs for a healthier America."

"America has unwittingly created an unhealthy society for our children. Lasting change that truly addresses the declining health of our nation needs to be led on the community level. YMCAs have the ability and reach to ignite the development of meaningful solutions that can alter the cycle of physical inactivity, obesity and chronic disease in our nation," says Kenneth L. Gladish, Ph.D., national executive director of YMCA of the USA.

In addition, the South Valley Y has been awarded a share of a three-year, $1.3-million grant through the Carol M. White Physical Education Program that will be divided between Santa Clara Valley and Mid-Peninsula YMCAs.

Grove says these grants are designed to help local educational agencies and nonprofit, community-based organizations to initiate, expand, or improve physical education programs, including after-school programs, for students in one or more grades from kindergarten through 12th grade. The money is intended to help students make progress toward meeting state standards for physical education.

The drop-in teen center at the YMCA is open Monday through Friday from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. YMCA South Valley is located at 5632 Santa Teresa Blvd., San Jose, 95123. For information, call 408.226.9622