As Patricia was saying, the fact that the YMCAs are led and owned locally is a critical factor for us. When we're dealing with these kinds of issues, for people or cultures to change requires a level of trust. The leadership, and the people leading change, need to be members of their own community, where there's already trust and a feeling that there's an understanding of the realities of that particular community.
In terms of best practices and learnings, we've seen great success, as have many other organizations, with youth exchanges.
This allows me to make a comment to you, Ms. Brown. We had a situation where we had a young person from a YMCA who came to a youth exchange program in Canada that was partially funded by the federal government, where he learned and was exposed to Canadian culture and Canadian values, and approaches to how to work with children. After several weeks in Canada, he gave unsolicited testimony in which he said, “I have learned not to hurt the children through those practices like caning. I have learned that there are alternative ways of working with children to engage them in their school work.“ That was very powerful testimony for anyone who was in that room.
The value of one-to-one conversation and dialogue-sharing cannot be underestimated, particularly in youth exchanges, where people are forming their understanding of different cultures. Through that dialogue, you have a growing sense that perhaps there are different ways of approaching things. We have had our learnings in Canada as well, through those exchanges with other countries.