Celebrate with Us

It's not too late to sign up for our Annual Celebration. It is happening tonight at the New Mazzeo's Ristorante located on 115 South Street. Join our avid members, staff and Board of Directors for our recap of the year 2009, an award ceremony, our guest speaker Denis Guyer and more. Please remember that everyone is welcome to come.

I just wanted to send out a reminder that we are offering a Red Cross Lifeguard Certification class that starts on February 7, 2010 and will be hosted by our Aquatics Director. This could be a great new job opportunity for anyone who is over 15 years of age and is looking for a change or something new.

Doing More For Our Children One Step at a Time

Swim lessons are starting tomorrow for our winter session! It is not too late to sign up for the term that runs from January 19 until March 6. Contact our Aquatics Director Georgette Keator at 413-499-7650 ext. 11. or click here to register your child online.

We are happy to announce that we will be offering Kid's Night Out once a month in 2010 spanning from February to May and then picking back up again from September to December. The exact dates of these events can be found here. For those of you who do not know exactly what Kid's Night Out entails, it is a nighttime event that spans from 6- 9 p.m. on a Saturday night. During this time period children come to the YMCA and get the chance to watch a film, swim in the pool and play basketball and games in the gymnasium. This is all planned and monitored by our Afterschool Director and his staff. The age range for this event is 5-12 years of age. We want children to be able to meet one another within our community and to make new friends during the event. Parents get the opportunity to breath for a night and have some quality time with friends, family, or even themselves knowing that their children are having fun at the YMCA. I am glad that we are able to make this night more stable by being able to offer it on a monthly basis. If you miss one then you can always check out the website and know when the next one will be occurring.

From one of our babysitting surveys I was told that a person was unaware of what our babysitting services would include. Babysitting at the YMCA is a 90 minute service where a parent can bring their child with them and have them safely watched by a certified babysitter for $4 a child. This is convenient for parents who do not use childcare, but still want to enjoy our fitness facility, fitness classes, pool, and more. We want to bring this back so that we are still sticking to our nationwide "family friendly" image.

Week 3 of January, Week 3 of New Beginnings

I am extremely happy to hear the positive feedback we have been receiving from our members and non-members regarding our fitness class additions. Not only have our new classes been a hit, but I am hearing that there has been an increase in the attendance of our traditional classes and our fitness center. Keep up those New Years resolutions, stay healthy and keep attending our facility!

Look out for the nationwide brand revitalization of the YMCA's that will be happening. I attended their webinar this afternoon and the new strategy is looking more and more complete each month.

We launched a survey this morning around 9:45 a.m. regarding bringing babysitting back to the YMCA. The YMCA stands for kids and families so this aspect is really an integral part of our mission. Please click here to take our survey. Everyone's opinion is important in this decision- making process.

We are looking to expand our youth programs so that there is more for children in Berkshire County to do, especially during the cold winter months. If you have any ideas or comments please email me at sjacobs@nycap.rr.com.

Sticking to Our Mission

It has come to our attention how important our community thinks that it is for us to be there for our children. The YMCA has been a place for decades where kids can grow up in a safe, fun, and welcoming enviroment. It is an establishment where kids become teens, teens become young adults, and young adults become adults who represent us and decide later where they want their children to strive here. We want to be able to grow with our children and help to decrease the rise in teen drinking and teenage pregnancies.

Currently we have strong youth programs and are looking to start additional stimulating groups for our youth. If you have any feedback or requests for additional programming feel free to email me.

Thankfully, we have been recently recognized for our new programs of Dodgeball, Vinyasa Yoga, Tango, and Zumba. We hope to use these programs to better our image by being more welcoming to our local non-members and by now offering all of our fitness programs to non-members for $5 a class.

Next month we will also be adding our Youth Indoor Triathlon due to the success of our adult version last weekend.

Up and Coming Events

The new year is bringing new changes to our YMCA facility. I am happy to see that things are changing so quickly.

Tango and Zumba have their kick off next week and are quickly bringing in anxious members and non-members.

Our Indoor Triathlon kicks off tomorrow at 9:00 a.m. and everyone can still register online or at our front desk. Just go to pittsfieldfamiyymca.org and click on our link to register or visit 292 North Street.

We are going to also be making all of our fitness classes available once again to non-members for a flat fee of $5 each class. Enjoy yoga, vinyasa yoga, kickboxing, cycling, lunch crunch, boot camp, and more.

Our local media has been great to us and is also enthusiastic when it comes to seeing Pittsfield and North Street come alive again.

It should be an enticing and stimulating year of 2010.