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Our Cause: Giving kids a place to belong
All Justin needed was a second chance.

He found it at the Y.

As a teenager, Justin was referred by the juvenile court system to Y-CAP, a YMCA youth development center in East Nashville that helps kids who need second chances. At Warren’s House, Y-CAP’s residential group home for adolescent males, Justin found the mentor he needed to help change his life.



Mr. Corey, the group home parent at Warren’s House, taught Justin how to be a young man and helped him realize what it would take for him to succeed. Fortunately for Justin, they were life lessons he took to heart.

“I’ve learned that not everything in life is going to be handed to me,” Justin says. “I have changed from being a stubborn, ungrateful and selfish young man to having a better understanding of life itself.”

He is also a young man in college with new dreams and aspirations. Justin’s current plans are to study Education and Communications so he can be a high school teacher—and a role model just like Mr. Corey.

“My Y-CAP family has helped me realize that opportunities are always open in so many ways that I never knew before,” Justin explains. “I really am thankful and happy to say there are people in this world who care and who have the abilities to change a person’s life, like mine has been changed.”

Learn more

View our 2011 Annual Report to read a personal letter from Justin and learn how we helped more than 100,000 kids like Justin get the tools and support they needed to succeed last year.

Get involved

Your gift to the Y’s Annual Giving Campaign can make a difference in the life of a child in your community. Your impact will be felt when another child like Justin is inspired by a mentor, when a family makes a healthy choice together, or when a neighbor receives help when they need it most.
Donate now
WHO WE ARE
For over 130 years, the YMCA of Middle Tennessee has been guided by its Christian mission and values to strengthen the foundations of our community and nurture the potential of the men, women and children who call our region home.

As a leading nonprofit dedicated to meeting community needs, we engage people across 12 counties, giving more than 329,000 of our neighbors—nearly half of them kids—the chance to learn, grow and thrive.

OUR MISSION
A worldwide charitable fellowship united by a common loyalty to Jesus Christ for the purpose of helping people grow in spirit, mind and body.

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