The Young Men’s Christian Association is a global faith based Confederation of 130 National Movements founded in England in 1844. This noble association serves over 40 million youths worldwide from all religious and social backgrounds.
Based on the above, the YMCA was established in Sierra Leone since 1912 on the pretext of designing and providing programmes and services that addresses issues of relevance to the body, Mind and Spiritual Upliftment of our younger people.
Through its existence in Sierra Leone, the YMCA can today boast of a voluntary membership of about 1000 with 60 professional staff, operating in 23 local communities in Sierra Leone.
This organization has brought together local YMCA branches in order to harness resources, share experiences and face the challenges of our country Sierra Leone as a network. It has also engaged itself in broadest possible cross sections of the communities in identifying, designing implementing and evaluating youth empowerment programmes. This further fits into our vision, which states to Empowering Young People for the African Renaissance The present social and economic situation of Sierra Leone is one that is totally devastated and been heavily supported by the international community.
The Challenge of the Sierra Leone YMCA is that of the development and implementation of its strategic plan while instituting measures that would see the YMCA and its local branches achieve their goals that have been set out in a five year strategic plan (2010-2015).
The Sierra Leone YMCA has its headquarters in Freetown with the National General Secretary as the head and 100 staff, 60 of whom are professionals and 30 supporting staff and 10 Volunteer staff. Its operations are overseen and supervise by the National Executive Committee (Board) that meets quarterly. The National executive committee is composed of 30% youths and women, hence a fair representation of those we are working with at decision-making level.