The Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) movement began 167 years ago in London. It was officially founded on June 6, 1844.
Now YMCA has spread to 130 countries and as an organization it is to meet the demands and necessities of reality at present. It unifies millions of people irrelevant of their sex, citizenship, religion and nationality.
The emblem of YMCA is an equilateral triangle
the top down.
The YMCA began its activity in Armenia from 1992. There are 5 local YMCA-s in different towns of Armenia now. There is a YMCA in Nagorno Karabagh as well. The YMCA of Armenia has been a member of European Alliance of YMCAs since 1999.
The YMCA movement is an NGO that reflects Christian values in secular life and tends to serve any human community everywhere in the world. The association has no preaching aims and has no relations with any political movement.
Spitak YMCA is already an organization with its formed institutions and running programs, by its stable position in the public life of Spitak.
Spitak YMCA began its activity in Spitak from 1994 as a National Union program. On June 15, 2001 Spitak YMCA was registered in the RA Ministry of Justice as Spitak YMCA NGO.
Since 2001 Spitak YMCA has been cooperating with Zurich YMCA. This cooperation later grew into a partnership in the result of which Zurich YMCA has been supporting Spitak YMCA financially and developing both human resources and the on-going programs. Throughout this partnership various projects have been carried out such as camps, visits to Armenia and Switzerland. With the financial support of Zurich YMCA and Swiss donators Spitak YMCA Community Center new building construction was started in 2008. The wide possibilities suggested by the new building will allow Spitak YMCA to enlarge the number of the activities carried out as well as the number of people involved in them.
Spitak YMCA is
- To contribute to the harmonic spiritual, mental and physical growth of youth and teenagers, to carry out programs directed to the development of their individual skills and their relations with the environment, to organize programs and events for their meaningful pastime and education.
- To help to develop the YMCA movement in Spitak and in its neighboring communities and to make the cooperation between the community members more active in the process of solving community problems and making the community stronger.
- To support and implement programs corresponding to the educational, health care, social, lifestyle and rest and pastime arrangement needs of the families or their members.
- To assist to the formation and development of teenagers’ and youth voluntary unifications based on common interests, preferences and problems and to implement programs and events to show their creative skills, to satisfy their spiritual requirements, to organize healthy lifestyle and pastime arrangement of the families and/or their members, to acquire and develop personal, interpersonal and public communication skills.
- To create favorable conditions for the youth to obtain various professional skills and abilities and to develop them.
- To take an active part in public life and to assist to its democratic development as much as possible.