Community: The “Why” Behind the YMCA of High Point
What makes it so fun to stay at the YMCA of High Point? Simple - the ceaseless dedication behind the scenes of people in our community who have given decades of their lives to serving others.
Like Lynn Lomax – whose story is one of a persevering mission to spread love, which expands through all of the local locations of the YMCA of High Point. As the chief executive officer of our local Ys, Lynn is a strong leader whose 40 years of service to the YMCA has not gone unnoticed in our own city. But the efforts of the YMCA in bettering and supporting High Point’s growing community is not just a top-down effort.
Vice President of the Carl Chavis YMCA, Carlvena Foster, has spent 22 years sharing her heart and soul with the youth of High Point, creating a sanctuary amidst the chaos of growing up that prioritizes teaching our young not only how to live, but how to excel.
In his 40 years of working for the Y, Lynn has spent time in small towns like Salisbury, NC, where he grew up, but also in massive cities like Charlotte, NC, where the sheer size of the YMCA membership afforded his work resources that aren’t as easy to come by in a smaller town.
So why High Point? Lynn, after living in towns both big and small, chose High Point for its cozy size and the strengthened sense of neighborly love that comes with it.
“The small community just creates that connectivity,” he says, “It’s all worth it because of the support of the community and how much they believe in the YMCA and how much they have embraced what we’re trying to do.”
While Lynn’s 40 years of expertise working in YMCA facilities in large cities like Charlotte is impressive on its own, his commitment to staying kind and humble is a testament to his parallel mission of creating a foundation of love through which to grow the outreach of the YMCA here in High Point. Lynn found his calling in the Y by integrating his personal philosophies with those that the YMCA stands for.
He calls his mission, “putting Christian principles into practice. Loving others, serving others, those things are what I have tried to spend my career doing and the Y has been a conduit that has allowed me to do that in a way that I don’t have to apologize for.”
Unapologetic, unconditional devotion to the High Point community looks like pinpointing areas of our community that need extra support, and finding ways to serve, not out of charity but out of love for the community that is created by the individuals of High Point coming together.
With a message so strikingly kind as his, Lynn has no trouble finding helping hands all over High Point.
He says, “I don't know that I have called any person or any group yet that hasn’t wanted to work with us.”
What the High Point YMCA system strives to accomplish under Lynn’s direction currently is the development of the teen programs that the Y offers. Teens, Lynn found, are a group that goes underserved in most communities because of the great abundance of possibilities teenagers face, often without the guidance that they need. No longer kids, free to focus only on play, but not yet adults, it is often daunting for teenagers to face the decisions that come with their first steps into adulthood.
That’s where YMCA programming comes in. Alongside sports, teen programs are centered around building a portfolio of opportunities for High Point’s newest members of society. The free summer teen program showcases these opportunities. While the program began as a part of a COVID-19 response, the foundations of leadership, education, and, of course, sports drew in teenager participation in a way that not even Lynn’s decades of experience prepared him for.
“We thought we’d have 50 or 60 kids that first year. We ended up with over 200 that summer. The program has grown to over 600 kids,” he says.
One thing that has made the teen programs at High Point’s YMCAs so successful is the team of caring people under Lynn that make these programs run on a location by location basis. Who better to exemplify this resounding success than Carlvena Foster, Vice President of the Carl Chavis YMCA, and the namesake for their brand new childcare center.
The success of the Chavis Y’s childcare comes from hard-working people like Carlvena, who have given decades of their time serving their community any way they can. And in the Chavis YMCA, that means understanding the needs of both the children and parents who utilize the Y’s programs.
As a state-licensed child care center, the Chavis Y is able to serve babies up to teens. Sometimes, for Carlvena, measuring success looks like understanding what a community needs based on what people just can’t live without. For children in the YMCA programs, that means the Carl Chavis Y. When kids started aging out of their youth programs, Carlvena was met with pleading faces not ready to say goodbye.
“We know we’re too old, but can we keep coming?” Carlvena repeats the phrase she heard over and over.
What makes the children want to come back every single day is the empathy and compassion Carlvena and her team show each and every child. Because growing kids wanted to keep coming back to the Y, the Chavis YMCA formed a teen program. And because people like Carlvena care so deeply about those teens, she has found ways to do more than offer a comfortable third space for the youth under her wing.
While an essential aspect to the teen program under Carlvena’s design is to simply provide a comfortable space where the teens can relax and feel at home while having the opportunity to socialize, another aspect is helping them realize their potential in education, leadership, and careers.
Teens who just drop by to play a casual game of basketball are met with Carlvena’s mission.
“This is your house,” she says. And the community that uses the Chavis YMCA comes to take that sentiment to heart. Kids who at first just stopped by to play sports become achievers through the programs they join. They grow up with the support they had from the YMCA.
Participation in the Y’s programs has become generational under Carlvena’s watch. The children she helped grow, learn, and make their way in the world bring their own kids back to the Y to share the programs that made an impact in their own lives.
Because the Chavis YMCA is like a home, the teens are offered mutual respect. Rules and structure keep them safe, and otherwise, the kids enjoy a comfortable place to explore their autonomy.
She says, “I think they just need an outlet, and then when you ask them to do things, they're happy to do it because you allow them to do what they need to do. And they will be respectful, be responsible, be honest, and be considerate.”
Using that firm foundation of trust that they will be cared for and respected, the teenagers in Carlvena’s care can then comfortably reach out towards their ambitions, knowing that along every step of the way they will be supported.
Teens grow from this place of comfort to a place of confidence just from being able to use the Y as a safety net to embrace programs like Youth and Government, a mock legislative conference where children learn about the inner workings of our government, or Minority Achievers, which helps them grow into well rounded adults by setting post-secondary educational goals. When their time in highschool is running out, lots of teens feel thrust into the wide world without a roadmap. Not on Carlvena’s watch, and not when programs like Minority Achievers can change that fear into confidence.
“We expose them to businesses where they can shadow jobs, figure out their interests, and what they want to do,” she says.
“This is also where we build in the PSAT prep, SAT prep, college tours, and all kinds of enrichment activities that help them become adult achievers.”
“Success is becoming your own person, making good choices, excelling in school, developing self-confidence, believing in yourself, looking people in the eye and saying who you are."
Carlvena Foster, Vice President of the Carl Chavis YMCA
With the support of the YMCA through programs, scholarships, and assistance, the members, parents, and children of the YMCA of High Point can rely on the community that people like Lynn Lomax leave the big city for and people like Carlvena dedicate their lives to.
After it’s all said and done, though, Carlvena says that the measure of the YMCA is the success of the children who rely on them. What defines success for Carlvena?
“Success is becoming your own person, making good choices, excelling in school, developing self-confidence, believing in yourself, looking people in the eye and saying who you are,” she says. And the YMCA is all about helping people succeed.
From grand-scheme program planning to board games and basketball, with compassionate leaders like Lynn and Carlvena, the youth at the High Point YMCA are well on their way.
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The HPD Team
Photography (Hartley YMCA) by Maria West Photography
Photography (Chavis YMCA) by Zander Betterton