Lake County YWCA celebrates 90 years

When Janice Bennett was young, youth programs at the Young Women’s Christian Association gave her confidence and nurtured her interest in the sciences, she said.

Bennett, who now serves as executive director of YWCA Lake County, said the nonprofit organization offers a variety of programs to empower women and their families. And now the organization is celebrating 90 years of doing just that.

“We want to make sure we provide quality service to the residents of Lake County as their needs change and remain a vital part of the community,” Bennett said. ”We do that by continually reaching out to the community seeing what their needs are.”

YWCA Lake County began in the 1920s as a resource for women who had come to Waukegan to be with their partners enlisted at Naval Station Great Lakes. Since then, the organization has grown to serve more than 18,000 Lake County residents annually.

Bennett discussed the organization's successes, its partnerships with other organizations and what residents can look forward to in the years to come.

How did your experience being involved with YWCA as a child affect who you are today?
Self-esteem was very important, believing that as a young girl that I didn't have limitations. Young girls are never directed to entertain fields in math and science and I was actually much better in math and science than I was in art or philosophy. And, I studied that. I took computer training classes when I was in high school and sometimes I would be just one of a couple girls in a class filled with boys. But, I always felt that I could do it. And I think I received a lot of that from going to the YWCA all the years that I did as a young person.

What does YWCA Lake County offer residents?
We are the only YWCA in Lake County. There are [others] in the state, but we are the only one serving all of the residents in Lake County. So, we have programs that focus on girls' and women's health. We have programs that focus on youth and our youth programs focus on children and young adults – boys and girls. And we have programs for young women that are focusing on STEM –  science, technology, engineering and mathematics. We have day and after school programs for boys and girls. So, we're very involved with youth.

Why is it important to provide resources for youth?
So they can continue their learning. We're very interested in making sure children are prepared. We have programs for toddlers to make sure they're prepared to compete [and] to make sure they have the continued development others who are more fortunate already have. It's a very competitive world. We want to make sure we level the playing field. A lot of the children that we serve come from underserved, not as privileged, maybe a lower socio-economic background. And, this is a way we make sure these children have the same privileges other children might have.

What are some other areas YWCA focuses on?
We focus on empowering women, children and families. We have over 200 training classes that we provide in English and Spanish throughout the year. We provide all of our classes in English and Spanish. Our primary entrepreneurial program is how to become a day care center operator. We've had this program for over 12 years. It is one of the most successful. It's a five-month program. We run it in English for five months then we run it in Spanish for five months. We offer continuing education courses to help them get their certifications. We want to support you all the way. And, we have people that have graduated from that program that started with a day care in their home and now we have several people that own and operate an outside center, brick and mortar centers. And, they started in our programs. So, that is really quite an accomplishment for the agency. We nurture them and provide them with resources as they grow their operations. We continue to have educational classes for them to attend.

We work with the state and in Lake County to administer the childcare assistance program. So, if the main provider is working or in school – and there are certain guidelines that the state has set up – the state will approve them to have some assistance with their childcare. We have a database with over 800 childcare providers. Through that program on a monthly basis sif we look at the number of day care center operators in Lake County probably 3 million dollars a month in revenue is generated for Lake County through these day care operators. People don't realize that.
We have 50 staff members. Some of our staff are off-site because our before and after schools programs are in Waukegan and North Chicago. We just started summer day camp.

Is programming open to everyone?
Yes. What is wonderful about our day and after school programs is that you will see generations of family members enrolled. Our school programs have people that are paying the market rate as well as people that are getting some assistance. That says a lot about the programs – that we have parents that have generations of children in the program. We also have young people – after 13 they phase out of the program – but they will come back and tutor the children.

How does YWCA keep current with the needs of the community?
We just had a program consultant work with us who hosted focus groups in the community and conducted focus groups with some of the educational institutions we work with to see what their offerings are. We talked to some of our partners, such as the banks, and to our clients to make sure that we are keeping up with what they feel is current. We just finished this. Our offerings are things our clients have requested.

What are some new programs YWCA will offer?
Not everyone wants to have a day care center but they want to learn how to own and operate their own business. So, we're currently in discussions with the College of Lake County and Women's Development Center [in Chicago] to offer entrepreneurial training – how to jump start a business. A class even before that is are you sure you want to own your own business? We're going to offer entry-level jump start classes. We're in  so we haven't finalized it yet. The other thing we want to do is for those who already own their own businesses we know that through CLC's small business center they have consultants that can help business owners take their business to the next level. We want to have our bank partners help to as far as the financial aspect goes.

On the day care side, we are now teaming up with the Department of Children and Family Services for those who have a day care center in their home to learn what it takes to open up an outside center. What are the obstacles? The first thing is don't go out and buy a building because DCFS might say it's not accessible for children. So, that will start this summer –moving from a home base to a brick and mortar, outside of your home center. The requirements are very different.
We're offering more in our health and nutrition programs.

We are also expanding. For most of our services we've been in North Chicago, Waukegan, Beach Park and Zion. We have been offering classes in Round Lake Beach. We also work in other areas of Round Lake with the library to offer our training classes. We just started offering our tech girls programs in two of the Round Lake middle schools. We also are going to be offering classes in Antioch at Hillcrest Elementary School. And, we'll be offering classes in Mundelein. Instead of people always having to come here to take classes we have found that we have a very large demographic in Round Lake, in Antioch and Mundelein. And so, we're taking a lot of our classes to those areas. And those towns have been very receptive.

It sounds like strong partnerships are part of what makes this organization successful. How does celebrating 90 years reflect YWCA Lake County?
Partnerships are a major part of our growth. I think that 90 years shows stability. It shows a commitment to the residents. It shows that we provide programs that the community is interested in and that they need. It shows we're open to change.

What are some issues that women in Lake County face?
In health, I would say there are so many that are uninsured or underinsured. We have our breast health program where we partner with hospitals to provide mammograms. It's so important. Some ethnic groups have stereotypes about being tested for mammograms. And they don't know how to access the services. We help them through the entire process. I think it's also a challenge for seniors. Knowing how to navigate through the health process is a major challenge for senior women.

How does YWCA Lake County embrace cultural differences?
Half our staff are bi-cultural. We are very sensitive to that and the changing demographic. There's been a change of growth and a significant growth of Latino community members. Half our staff are bilingual. Even in our health program we've been doing a lot more outreach to the Latino population about breast health because there are those challenges from their culture. We have women that only speak Spanish that need help. We will set up the appointment and if you need someone to drive you to the appointment we will drive you there. We've found a way to reach out to different populations.

Why is it important to provide resources for women to better themselves?
To have a woman who is empowered is a woman that can support her family, that can make contributions to the community and can bring revenue into the community. So, a woman that is empowered is a powerful woman. There  is no limit to what an empowered woman can do. And self-sufficiency. They are able to take care of or make major contributions to taking care of their families.

What role do men play at YWCA?
A lot of men own day cares. There are husband and wife teams. So, they come into our classes. They come to our English as a second language and financial literacy classes. They attend our computer literacy classes. Men conduct the classes. So, it's really the family. We are looking for ways to empower the family.