The World President travels to South America

This is a 'Guest' post from the President of the Worlds Alliance of YMCA, Mr Peter Posner MBE who is also Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Derbyshire YMCA in England.

This morning I have a meeting with Cardinal Mario Poli, Archbishop of Buenos Aires who is the head of the Roman Catholic Church in Argentina.  Followed by a meeting with Argentinean Finance Minister Alfonso Prat Gay (the equivalent of George Osborne in the UK).  We then go to the down town YMCA for lunch with local young business and church leaders, followed by a meeting with the Mayor of Buenos Aires Horacio Rodriguez Larreta.  Tonight I meet more YMCA volunteers then dinner with the National Secretary and Chair. Even in my unusual world as President of the World YMCA, this is going to be quite a day. 

I have just spent a week in Brazil, visiting YMCAs in four cities of which the largest was Sao Paolo.  There they have 12 YMCA branches offering mostly sport and mainstream schooling, plus 20 “social development” branches working in poorer areas.   This latter part interested me most.  Children going to public (i.e. free) school go either in the morning or afternoon and the YMCA offers pre or after school programmes.  These are all very good and provide a wide range of informal education, including performing arts.  I found myself helping out in a kind of native martial art dance accompanied by music on indigenous instruments.  Most interesting was an award winning programme based on circus skills and they even have a genuine big top for their training.

Here we are being presented with a gift at an after school club in the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro.

And this is a brand new second swimming pool about to be opened in Sorocaba, 100km from Sao Paolo.  It is also the YMCA where the Brazilian YMCA runs its own Executive Secretary training college.

I am now in Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina.  The YMCA here was formed almost 115 years ago.  They have a very well developed sports and social programme offering, plus schools for