The YWCA celebrated the opening of their new home on March 1. You know the one, the huge white mansion on the hill overlooking Cameron Street.

This move has been 5 years in the making, says Patricia Schwartz, Chief Executive Officer of the YWCA. While the old YWCA on Market Street is big, large lobbies made the space difficult to utilize. The new building will allow more people and more space per person. Not to mention plenty of windows, open space, and what has got to be one of the best views of Harrisburg in the entire city.

The building, which was built by Colonel John Brandt in 1860, has been vacant for 20 years now, but with a little bit of landscaping and a 37,000 square foot addition, the mansion is better than new. Besides its physical appearance, one of the most interesting things about the structure is its heritage.

"It’s always been used for some sort of community good," says Schwartz. The building has served as a bishop’s house, seminary, motherhouse for a convent, a home for unwed mothers, and an orphanage.

The YWCA philosophy, in short, is, "Strengthening the community one family, one woman at a time." The YWCA of the Greater Harrisburg Area has been serving the region since 1893 providing programs for the advocacy of women and children and women’s issues. Their mission is to empower women, and children as well as eliminate racism and prejudice.

As the leading women’s organization in central Pennsylvania, the YWCA provides residence services, rape crisis, domestic violence services, prevention/education programs, summer camping programs, and year round daycare services. A new feature of the YWCA is a Pinnacle Health Center located on premises, which provides primary care for residents as well as the whole neighborhood.

The residence services include emergency shelter for homeless women and children, transitional housing for women and their children, which is designed to bridge the gap between homelessness and independent living, and they also offer low income housing, which is dormitory style living for very low rent. Life skills and educational training is a large part of these programs.

Rape crisis and domestic violence services are available in the way of a 24-hour hotline, hospital and court accompaniment, individual and group counseling are available, and shelter at a confidential location is available to women and children in domestic violence situations. The YWCA also offers prevention/education programs on sexual assault, dating violence, date rape, and domestic violence in the classroom and professional in-service programs.

The YWCA offers daycare for infants and children. One of the advantages of the new YWCA is that it offers the children an outdoor courtyard to play in, and there are plans to bring in some master gardeners to help create a children’s garden.

But it’s not all fun and games for the kids at the YWCA. "We don’t do babysitting," says Schwartz, "We do child development." They stress math and science from an early age; in fact, they start computer training at the age of two. They also stress gender neutral education. Schwartz says, "Because we are a women’s organization we’re very clear about the fact that girls and women have always been acculturated away from math and science," which will be key in future jobs.

The YWCA currently employs 80 individuals, and has an active volunteer list of 180 and they could easily use another 180, says Schwartz. If you don’t believe that your time will help, remember that all the fundraising, all the decorating, and much of the planning were done on a strictly volunteer basis. Volunteers are needed to read to kids, teach in the technology center, work with domestic violence and rape crisis centers (training is provided), teach crafts to children and much more.

For more information on any of the services offered by the YWCA, or to volunteer, please call 234-7931.