Bridging, Belonging & Hope: Amplifying the YMCA Movement with RSD

This impact story is abridged and adapted from an in-depth case study.

Photo of a diverse crowd from a Bridge of Hope gathering

“We can decide not to be polarized. We can be carriers of hope in practice. It's not just a wish—you can do it.”

Janelle Nelson, Association Mission Director

YMCA of Pierce and Kitsap County (WA)

Shortly before the pandemic, an advisory council member at a YMCA center in Washington state noticed the divisiveness in his community and throughout the entire country. He urged the Y’s leaders to find a way to address this divide.

In 2020, Janele Nelson, association mission director for the YMCA of Pierce and Kitsap County (PKC Y), reached out to Essential Partners (EP) to see if it could help. EP’s Reflective Structured Dialogue © (RSD) is a highly flexible approach to communication and culture change, especially when navigating differences of perspectives and identities.

It was just what the PKC Y needed.

The next year, EP led a two-day, online training on RSD for 18 PKC Y staff members and community volunteers, including the advisory council member who had initially noticed the problem. The PKC Y has since led issue-oriented community dialogues and has hosted internal dialogues to navigate difficult questions while also shifting the culture of the institution.

It wasn’t long before the collaboration between EP and the “Y movement” extended to the YMCA of the USA (Y-USA). Thanks to a 2024 grant from the AAA-ICDR Foundation, EP was able to begin working with 19 additional YMCAs over the following two years.

In each case, a cohort of stakeholders was trained in RSD design and implementation. The local Ys have subsequently received support and coaching as they adapt RSD to their unique needs and context. Nearly all the local Ys have identified an urgent need for healthier communication norms within their institutions, particularly for healthier conversations about operational and/or strategic questions that intersect with the shared values of the local Y community.

“RSD complements the way that we obviously want to support community and how we want to be looked at when there are issues that are coming into the community,” says Jenelle Balstra, Learning and Training Manager for the Alliance of Massachusetts YMCAs and Northeast Learning Center, who participated in an EP training in 2026.

“RSD seemed an obvious, helpful tool both for how our own organization talks within about hard things and also as controversial things happen in the community,” says Tim Hallman, association chaplain of The YMCA of Greater Fort Wayne (Fort Wayne Y).

The Fort Wayne Y and Massachusetts Alliance Ys are just a few of many local Ys leveraging RSD to hold challenging discussions, to develop internal skills and capacities, and to weave a culture of belonging to amplify the mission of the larger Y movement.

The Y Movement

George Williams, a young factory worker, founded the first YMCA in London in 1844. “He saw a desperate lack of connection, infrastructure, and well-being,” Nelson says. Though they were packed into rooms above the factories where they worked, sharing beds with their coworkers, these lonely, isolated young men had no sense of community or direction. “The YMCA was a spiritual answer to a societal need,” explains Nelson.

The first American YMCA was established in Boston seven years later, and YMCAs would spring up throughout the United States over the decades that followed. Now celebrating its 175th year, the network of YMCAs touches an astonishing number of Americans. According to the Y-USA website, “The nation’s 2,600 Ys serve 17.4 million people in 10,000 communities and are spread across all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.”

Because the YMCA is built on a federation model rather than a top-down hierarchy, local Ys have a great deal of autonomy—even mission statements may vary from one YMCA to the next. While the local Ys pay dues to Y-USA, the national organization serves primarily as a resource to local Ys rather than a governing body. In addition, many local Ys band together in statewide or regional “alliances.”

The result is a multilayered phenomenon known as the “Y movement.” “Even though many organizations, especially as old as the Y, are viewed more as institutions,” Nelson observes, “the Y has remained in many regards as a movement that is responsive and agile enough to rise up to needs on a local and community level.”

While it can vary by locality, the most commonly adopted mission statement sounds something like this: “The Y is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to put Christian principles into practice through programs that build healthy spirit, mind and body for all.”

Key phrases in the mission statement prompt discussion and exploration today. For example, what does it mean to include “Christian” in the YMCA’s contemporary identity? And what does providing programs “for all” actually entail?

Photo of a YMCA employee smiling at a member

“Sometimes you’ve got to play the long game. Keep at it every day. Hope.”

The YMCA of Pierce and Kitsap Counties (Washington)

Founded in 1883, the YMCA of Pierce and Kitsap Counties spans two large counties in Washington state, including the city of Tacoma as well as a U.S. naval base. With a staff of about 2,400 and nine centers (with fitness facilities, pools, art rooms, and dance studios), the PKC Y serves 130,000 people annually. In addition, it partners with eight school districts to provide before-school and after-school care for elementary school students and operates three early learning centers for younger children.

After staff and volunteers participated in a two-day training with EP, the PKC Y began to host external dialogues, both for the community at large and for specific partners who approached Nelson for this type of programming. One early dialogue focused on community members’ perspectives on homelessness.

“We weren’t trying to say we were going to solve or come up with a big strategic plan for this community about homelessness,” Nelson recalls. “We wanted to have people talk about how they view homelessness.”

These community dialogues became known as “Bridge of Hope,” an initiative initially directed by Nelson and now led by Sean Lambird, PKC Y’s association mission coordinator. Bridge of Hope built on the PKC Y’s desire to function as “a third place”—a space open to any member of the community, without cost or membership, a place where residents could gather to talk with one another in deeply meaningful ways.

Through Bridge of Hope, the PKC Y has partnered with local institutions and communities to lead dialogues on several divisive or difficult topics. A local school district reflected on the high rates of bullying and suicide, and what could be done. A communication professor at a local community college has led her students in dialogues about politics, social media, and their anxieties and fears concerning AI and technology. And local faith congregations have held dialogues on issues ranging from women’s leadership to guns.

Increasingly, the PKC Y found that the change it wanted to see in the world would need to start internally. Certainly, RSD would be used for challenging or complex internal discernment about policy, belonging, and values. But more than that, PKC Y staff would need to embody this change themselves, including in their interactions with colleagues and the public.

RSD needed to be woven into the fabric of the PKC Y’s culture, so it was paramount that staff and volunteers become more fluent in RSD principles and practices. Nelson and others began to lead one-hour introductions to RSD at staff meetings as well as staff dialogues on everyday issues like the Y’s dress code as well as more philosophical questions like the role of Christianity in the YMCA (see our impact spotlight on the Y Identity Project).

“Y staff and volunteers don’t give away what they don’t have,” Nelson observes. “Even well-being and spirit, mind, body, if they don’t understand what that is for themselves, if they're not engaged in well-being in an integrative way, they don’t do it for members. They don’t put it into their programs.” Nelson emphasizes that the principles of RSD have to be “embedded” into the culture of staff and their experience: “You’ve got to show it in-house.”

In his work with Bridge of Hope, Lambird is continuing this balance of community dialogues and using RSD as a tool for staff development, including what he calls “care for staff.”

Staff dialogue is essential. “We want to make sure that we’re caring for our own YMCA here at home,” he says. “We’re equipping our staff with the skills to relate with one another so they can care for one another in this community they’re working in together, regardless of the differences between them.”

Reflecting on the PKC Y’s work with RSD, Lambird says, “Part of the Y’s mission is social responsibility: How are we responding to our community that has all these needs? It’s a long game sometimes. It’s one of the greatest lessons I’ve learned in this role: Sometimes you’ve got to play the long game. Keep at it every day. Hope.”

The YMCA of Greater Fort Wayne (Indiana)

Founded in 1858 as one of the original “railroad Ys” that provided safe, respectable housing and services for railroad workers, the YMCA of Greater Fort Wayne has unusually deep roots in its community. The greater metro area has 400,000 people—80,000 of whom belong to the Y and another 20,000 to 30,000 who are “program participants,” and 1,500 of whom are staff. It is truly a cornerstone of the local community.

In December 2024, EP trainers came to the Fort Wayne Y to work with 24 full-time staff who were hand-selected to participate. The expectation was that everyone who came to the training would put RSD into practice within the next six months. Hallman reflects on “how easy it was to get a yes and how easy it was to get 24 key leaders to accept the invitation and clear their schedule for two days.” Hallman points to the “learning culture” at the Fort Wayne Y: “There was a hunger for an in-depth training on listening and how to listen among complex scenarios.”

The Fort Wayne Y has focused its RSDs on community issues such as teen isolation, senior participation in community spaces, and homelessness—all conducted through the lens of the Y’s local context.

For example, the Fort Wayne Y community was shocked when one of the teens who had been a Y staff member died by suicide. Hallman reflects: “It got us thinking about ‘how do we talk about something really hard like that? How are teens doing? What ways are they feeling alone and isolated, cut off with maybe nobody to talk to?’” Hallman and another EP-trained staff member led a dialogue on this very sensitive topic.

From that initial dialogue, the Fort Wayne Y created a teen leadership summit, where teens learned how to be “bridgebuilders” and to reach out to other teens who seem, in Hallman’s words, “cut off, alone, not sitting with anyone.” Hallman continues to lead these bridgebuilding RSDs. He helps participants address isolation and loneliness, whether they see this isolation when they serve other teens in summer camps or when they return to school in the fall.

In another series of RSDs, the Fort Wayne Y sought to understand the motivation behind certain senior citizens who used the Y. They also deployed RSD to navigate internal policy around the use of shared public spaces by people experiencing homelessness (see our impact spotlight). These RSDs, says Hallman, “created a very safe space for people to share things that otherwise they may have glossed over or not shared in such rich detail. It was less about solving a crisis and more about making a safe space for people to share vulnerable stories of what the Y has done in their life.”

Hallman also sees an opportunity to develop the capacity for healthy discourse by deploying RSD with the Y’s advisory board, comprising local leaders from different sectors. “How we process it there at that advisory board meeting gives them skills they’re not going to get anywhere else. People have a really unique experience when they volunteer as an advisory board member, and they’re the ones going back to their banks and businesses and churches and hospitals and law firms and government offices addressing things there.”

“RSD created a very safe space for people to share things that otherwise they may have glossed over or not shared in such rich detail. It was less about solving a crisis and more about making a safe space for people to share vulnerable stories of what the Y has done in their life.”

Tim Hallman, Association Chaplain

The YMCA of Greater Fort Wayne (IN)

The YMCA of the USA

George Zavala is the manager of Bridging, Belonging, and Community Engagement at YMCA of the USA (Y-USA). This body of work, led by Y-USA's Global Relations and Community Engagement (GRACE) team, helps YMCAs across its global movement develop the skills and practices needed to strengthen relationships and deepen trust.

GRACE helps Y staff develop the relationship-building skills that are needed to allow people to thrive. Y-USA pilots and tests tools and resources to create leading practices local Ys can use as they foster community engagement, build staff relationships, and cultivate connections between the Y and volunteers. Y-USA’s job is to take what an organization like EP offers and then make it relevant to and resonant with the work of local Ys.

When Zavala joined Y-USA in late 2023, the Team Up Project, a national collaboration between Catholic Charities USA, Habitat for Humanity International, Interfaith America, and the YMCA, was already getting underway. The initiative advances service-based bridge-building by bringing people together across differences to build relationships, strengthen communities, and work toward the common good.

Through the Team Up Project, Zavala met Nelson, who had been working with EP and RSD in the PKC Y’s Bridge of Hope program (see above) for several years. Bridge of Hope sparked the interest of Y-USA and the Team Up Project, and ultimately led to Nelson introducing Y-USA to EP in early 2024.

In 2026, after a period of informal thought partnership and support, EP led an RSD training that led to the launch of a formal initiative through the Y-USA’s Bridgebuilding Innovation Team. EP now leads content and expertise for a smaller cohort of Ys, including the Birmingham Y.

In total, twenty unique YMCAs in the U.S. have participated in two cohorts since 2023.

Particularly appealing to Y-USA is the fact that RSD is a very tangible set of practices. In its most robust form, it also provides a clear structure and process for difficult conversations. RSD reinforces many of the community engagement, inclusion, and belonging practices the Y has promoted for years, and Zavala sees the promise of more uptake in local Ys around these practices.

“We want to equip staff with the skills, techniques, and approaches that are proven to be successful in navigating difficult conversations,” he says, “so that community members, in turn, feel this is a space where they can practice these skills or have these tougher conversations potentially.”

YMCA’s Use of RSD: Insights, Successes, Challenges

The Ys that are working with or have been recently trained in RSD report overwhelmingly their strong conviction that, with RSD, people can learn to talk to each other, even if there are strong differences between them.

RSD amplifies what YMCAs are doing already in their focus on community engagement, belonging, and inclusion. Because RSD is not a rigid, one-size-fits-all model of dialogue and because it doesn’t rely on topic-based program design, it works well with the Y movement’s complex structure. Thus, RSD’s flexibility allows for widespread adoption and tailored application. Many YMCAs can be trained in the approach at once but deploy and adapt RSD for their own unique circumstances.

Key outcomes from the Y movement’s work with RSD include: mediating power dynamics; creating a sense of equity; planting seeds of hope; encouraging active and present listening; and nurturing genuine curiosity that dispels stereotypes. From the nuts-and-bolts techniques (such as giving each participant equal time to speak) to the spirit of connection the dialogues foster, these dialogues prompt authentic connections, deeper belonging, and the opportunity to share values, visions, and reflections.

The challenges that face YMCAs as they adopt RSD stem in large part from the Y movement itself—its sheer size and fragmented nature, its variable bureaucratic structures from local Y to local Y, and its organizational transitions and frequent staff turnover (due to a necessary reliance on part-time staff members, many of whom are very young). Moreover, as Hallman points out, YMCAs tend to be risk-averse and to shy away from controversial topics.

Despite these challenges, RSD is taking hold in Ys across the country. Success is seen not just in external programs, like the PKC Y’s Bridge of Hope, but perhaps even more so in the “listening culture” that is emerging inside local Ys. Across diverse regions and populations, the Ys trained by EP all see the need to make RSD part of their internal institutional cultures. This would allow them to influence their community authentically, reinforcing healthy communication and inclusion norms through every interaction across many different programs and centers.

The Future of RSD and the YMCA

EP is now working to secure funding to enable broader adoption of RSD across the Y movement. EP will continue to provide support for stakeholders using RSD in their local contexts, both within YMCAs and in the community.

To the Ys that have begun working with RSD, the possibilities seem limitless—from integrating daily skills for healthy internal communication to hosting community-facing dialogues on tough subjects.

“Part of our North Star, as we think about how we create more connected communities at the Y,” says Zavala, “is definitely the goal of reducing isolation, increasing connection, and helping people really see that the YMCA can be a place where they can come together.” He sees RSD as a crucial tool for achieving these goals.

Nelson perhaps says it best: “Our vision is to bring awareness to people that they are bridge builders, to awaken that desire to connect on a deeper level. I want to give people experiences of [RSD] working well so that they are more hopeful for themselves personally but also for society and the community. We can decide not to be polarized. We can be carriers of hope in practice. It's not just a wish—you can do it.”

This impact story is abridged and adapted from an in-depth case study.