Woking YMCA History
Woking is a large town and local government district with borough status in the west of Surrey in southeast England, near Guildford. Built around its large train station, the town expanded rapidly during in the 1800s.
Woking has outstanding green credentials; the council was one of the first local authorities to adopt its own comprehensive climate change strategy. Several combined heat and power stations provide heating and electricity for the district, and power is also generated by a combination of hydrogen fuel cells and solar cells. These are linked by an innovative private electricity distribution system operating independently of the national power grid.
Literary Woking
In HG Wells’ pioneering science fiction novel, The War of the Worlds, the Martian invaders landed in Woking. And there is a large sculpture of a Martian Fighting Machine in the town centre commemorating Woking’s fictional destruction.
The town also features in Douglas Adams’s spoof dictionary, The Meaning of Liff. In the book, ‘Woking’ is defined as that moment when you go to the kitchen but forget why you went in there.
Rebirth of Woking YMCA
Following the sale of the Woking YMCA building in 1991 the association remained dormant existing principally as revenue from the sale of the building in a bank account. Despite this, it was still a registered charity with a board of trustees.
In 1999, a group of Christian youth leaders aged 18 to 25 in Woking felt there was a need for a drop in centre in the town, somewhere where young people can visit to hang out, get information, advice and support, and keep away from drugs and alcohol. They presented the idea, called ReGen, to Woking borough council. While keen on the idea, the council felt that the proposal lacked some strategic thought and business planning.
They approached the nearby Guildford YMCA to help oversee the centre, but the YMCA felt they were not able to commit the time. However, two members of Guildford YMCA’s board were about to reach the end of their period on the committee. They decided to join Woking YMCA’s board with the aim to re-launch the organisation to run the centre.
New board
The first move to return Woking YMCA to full operations was to appoint a new chair and board. This new leadership team began to make plans to realise the vision of a drop in centre proposed by the local youth leaders.
Helen Keelty, vice chair of Woking YMCA, was involved in the project from the early stages and Dr John Thomas, Honorary Secretary of Woking YMCA, led the team of three board members that re-established Woking YMCA. By January 2004, 14 people made up Woking YMCA’s board.
Dr Thomas, who lives in Guildford, received an MBE in the 2006 New Year Honours list, in recognition of his work with the YMCA and for services to young people. He has been a volunteer at Woking and Guildford YMCAs for more than 20 years. Alongside being honorary secretary of Woking YMCA, he is and Treasurer and Trustee of the YMCA South East Region.
Geoff Cooper, YMCA England’s South East regional officer and staff from its fundraising and Programmes Department also played a key role in helping to re-launch Woking YMCA, providing expertise, advice and support.
YMCA England worked closely with Woking YMCA’s board to develop a strategic plan and vision for the new youth centre, and assisted in the recruitment and selection of staff.
Plans agreed
Encouraged by the YMCA’s professional approach, Woking council offered the project use of the first and second floors of a building in the centre of Woking that has not been used for 17 years. The office block in Chobham Road was in need of much work to make it a suitable venue for young people.
In April 2003, after much consideration, the council agreed the YMCA ReGen project, as it was then known. The council awarded £750,000 to Woking YMCA to transform the first floor into a modern youth centre. Woking council remain leaseholders and the YMCA pays for the day-to-day running and upkeep of the centre. Surrey County Council’s Local Committee for Woking also allocated funding to the project.
With the project given the go-ahead, Woking YMCA’s board decided to appoint a new chief executive. They chose Terry Eckersley, who was then housing manager at Southampton YMCA, and has 15 years experience with the YMCA. He was the first paid staff member to join the new Woking YMCA, working alongside Simon Bellord, volunteer fundraising and standards executive. In 2005, the Rotary Club of Woking awarded Simon their Community Man of the Year in recognition of his outstanding service as a volunteer.
Aims for the centre
Work began on the centre in September 2005, with the aim to open in Spring 2006. Shortly after, Terry Eckersley presented the YMCA’s vision for the centre at a meeting for local people in Woking at Christ Church in the centre of the town. The YMCA also sent out questionnaires to local young people and held brainstorming sessions at the new centre to learn what programmes and facilities they wanted.
The YMCA set out a series of aims for the first phase of the centre to:
- Provide a safe and positive environment for young people
- Offer young people an alternative to gathering in the streets, pubs, restaurants and clubs of the town centre.
- Be open to all young people up to the age of 19, regardless of any gender, race or faith
Woking YMCA’s new centre will operate:
- YMCA youth café
- Recording studio and DJ facilities
- A comprehensive information and advice service
- Drop in area with sofas and a plasma screen TV
- IT area with Internet access open to the public
- Drama hall and stage for performing arts
Drama and music will be the main activities at the centre. Woking YMCA has a long history of links with performing arts and music. The Beatles became members of Woking YMCA in 1963 and on 15 February 1980, at the height of their popularity, local boy Paul Weller and his band the Jam played a fundraising gig for the organisation.
Woking Youth Arts Centre reopened in March 2005, offering a rehearsal room, video editing and animation suite, drama studio, dance studio, performance area and recording studio. Woking YMCA will work alongside Woking Youth Arts, to offer a complimentary service to young people in the area.
The centre will be open after school and at weekends, entry is free but for some events, such as live music in the evenings, there will be a small fee. It will also host courses for young people run by local organisations.
Woking YMCA set a target for around 100 people to use the centre each week, with 95 per cent of them under the age of 20.
In April 2006, Woking YMCA recruited two more full time staff members: Dani Taylor, youth worker, and Hannah Robinson, information officer.
International links
Keen to use the YMCA’s international links and experience, the council approached Woking YMCA to help run its international exchange programme.
Three towns have close links and twin with Woking:
- Amstelveen in the Netherlands
- Le Plessis-Robinson in France
- Rastatt a city bordering the Rhine in South West Germany
Working with the council, Woking YMCA have organised an exchange trip to Rastatt in August 2006. Lasting a week, a group of 10 young people from Woking will visit the conservation projects in the city. Costing £150, youth leaders and staff from Woking YMCA will accompany the group.
Woking YMCA has also formed links with New York YMCA and made plans to organise exchange trips for YMCA youth workers.
Giving young people a voice
Woking YMCA is keen to make sure that young people are involved in making decisions about the centre. In 2005, it launched a competition for young people to name the new facilities. Rosie, 15, from Sheerwater and Maybury Youth Council, came up with the winning name: the Ypod centre. Mayor of Woking and president of Woking YMCA, councillor Ian Johnson and local singer songwriter, Anna Neale, presented Rosie with her winner’s prize.
To make sure the views of young people shaped the plans for the Ypod, Woking YMCA formed a partnership with representatives from Surrey County Council, Surrey Youth Offending Team and Woking Connexions. The group’s aim is to work alongside young people from local schools and youth agencies to listen to the views of a wide range of young people in Woking.
The Woking YMCA also works closely with Woking Youth Council and set up a similar council for the Ypod. Andrew Hardiman, 18, is a part of the Ypod Youth Council and volunteers for the YMCA, coordinating its fundraising. He helped to secure £16,183.27 funding from Surrey County Council’s Local Committee. Ashley Collins, 20, and Darren Collyer, 18, are also part of the Ypod youth council.
Events at the Ypod
To offer further funding for the Ypod’s work with young people, the centre is available for local organisations to hire for events and meetings. The first organisation to use the facilities was Surrey Young Farmers in April 2006.
An official opening of the Ypod will be held on 29 June 2006, with special guests Herbie Armstrong, solo artist and former member of Van Morrison’s band, and Terry Chimes who was a drummer with The Clash, Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers, and Black Sabbath. The centre will be open after school on Mondays and Fridays and on Saturdays from the beginning of July.
Future plans
A second phase in developing Ypod will involve equipping the building with sports facilities, including setting up a five-a-side football, badminton and basketball area on the second floor.
Although it offers advice and support to young people with housing needs, Woking YMCA also hope to offer accommodation to young people as the organisation develops. In partnership with Guildford YMCA, it runs a Nightstop scheme that provides short-term emergency accommodation for young people aged 16 to 25.
A visit to Woking YMCA by Peter Shaw
In February 2006, I visited Woking YMCA’s temporary offices in a building guarded by a (thankfully dormant) Martian Fighting Machine. I came to meet with its chief executive, Terry Eckersley, Stephanie Carter, art and events coordinator from Woking borough council, and Ashley Collins, a young YMCA volunteer.
They described the journey of Woking YMCA and how they want the new Ypod centre to have a big impact on the lives of young people in the town…
Terry Eckersley -
‘At the start we had to do a lot of work demystifying who and what the YMCA is, and what it is not. There hasn’t been a YMCA Woking for 15 years. Many people in Woking thought the YMCA was just for young Christian men. We had to explain that, although it was founded by young Christian men, the YMCA is for women and men, and people of all faiths and none.
‘We meet regularly with church leaders, Muslim and other faith leaders. And, indeed, people not from faith groups. We are not a church or a mosque, but we sit right between a mosque and a church in the community. It is vitally important that we are an organisation that welcomes people of all faiths and none. We understand that in the YMCA and we have been doing it for 160 years.
‘That is part of the YMCA’s vision and purpose. We want to bring the YMCA’s roots into the 21-century. This nation is crying out for young leaders. We need some 21-century George Williams’s [founder of the YMCA].
‘He was a young person from Somerset who came to London to be a draper where he experienced the Christian faith. Speaking to a friend walking back from chapel on Blackfriars Bridge, he said: “If I can find seven selfless people, we can change the world.” And he found them. That speaks volumes about an organisation that is not thinking about itself but the needs of others and the community. This culture and ethos is what the young George Williams brought. He was only in his late teens. That’s what we want to restore.
‘We are providing programmes that young people actually want, engaging with them and involving them in the leadership. We aim to give young people ownership and raise up leaders through our creative programmes. And we are helping instil core YMCA values of integrity and leadership. Giving people purpose, hope and vision and the tools to carry out that vision.
‘What we are doing is bringing the YMCA right into the 21-century, building on YMCA history, and the foundations set out by Sir George Williams. We want to be young people friendly, that’s why we are calling it Ypod.
‘It’s like William Booth’s vision for the Salvation Army, using the music of the day to reach the people of that day. We are not reinventing the wheel. What we are doing is stealing other people’s wheels and putting Woking 21-century tyres on them. We are engaging with young people to create the tyres and put those tyres on themselves.
‘There’s a lot of stigma and dismissal of young people today. But they have so much potential, energy, drive, vision and passion. We need to start affirming and celebrating that, and steering it in the right direction.
‘It’s been very exciting working with Woking Borough Council as they have always been forward thinking and they engage with the community. More than that, the people from Woking council are very heartfelt and have a lot of warmth. That, along with their professionalism, vision and strategy makes a very, very strong ally. Woking Borough Council is a recognised world leader for its environmental activities. It’s been great to work with them to make the centre happen.
‘With the Ypod, we will offer young people a centre of excellence. We are breaking the mould of giving young people a small basement to hang out in. We are thinking big, dreaming big dreams, and taking small steps. And helping young people to dream big dreams and take small steps.’
Stephanie Carter -
‘There are two main reasons for us working with the YMCA. The first is resources; the second is sustainability. I’m the only arts officer and most of my work is developing partnerships with local people. If the council decided to do everything in-house, we would not deliver anywhere near the amount that we can through working in partnership with organisations like the YMCA.
‘By relying on other people to carry out work for us, we are letting these things happen naturally and creatively. We are not dictating what happens in the town. We want projects to rise from grassroots working with young people. We accept that we are not the experts in delivering everything.
‘Young people will only go to something and keep coming back if it is interesting, and they are getting something out of it. I like our projects with young people to have something that contributes to their skills that they can us in later life. It is not about keeping young people off the streets. We want to give them opportunities to develop rather than hanging around and doing nothing.
‘The danger is when things are put on for young people without consulting them. We have a Woking youth council and we rely on them to feedback to us their ideas. They can’t speak for all young people in Woking. But it’s one way we can find out what young people think.
‘Although Terry and I haven’t been working together long, we already have mutual interests in increasing arts opportunities for young people in Woking. There are so many opportunities available through the Ypod and the YMCA.
‘As part of our strategy for Woking, the YMCA are a key partner for us in delivering cultural opportunities to young people. We know through talking to young people that there is not enough evening entertainment and activities. Terry and the YMCA are going to help us fill those gaps with music projects, events and gig nights.
‘We are going to be working closely with Woking YMCA. I hope it will incredibly productive and we will achieve a lot. When we start to get things running, we will make a big difference to young people in the town.’
Ashley Collins -
‘The Ypod centre is fantastic! As an outsider coming in and seeing the facilities, I know will be a new lease of life in Woking for young people.
‘I’ve been here for two months on a work placement. One of my main jobs has been sending out corporate fundraising letters. And we’ve had some success, Dell offered to donate us some computers.
‘Here in Woking there is a lot of crime and I think the activities at the Ypod will help reduce it, and give young people something positive to do. The YMCA will give the young people of Woking a place to come and chill, opportunities to get involved in the community. Woking YMCA’s vision is amazing and there is a real sense of hope here.’
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