YWCA Metro Vancouver was founded in 1897 and incorporated as a society in 1905. It is a non-profit, membership- and volunteer-based charitable organization. Originally formed by members of two Vancouver charitable organizations, the Women’s Improvement League of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church and the Anglican Girls’ Friendly Society, the organization’s initial mandate concerned providing relief work. However, the four women who established YWCA Metro Vancouver—Skinner, Banfield, Macaulay, and Southcott—quickly expanded the mandate to more fully support young women’s independence. The YWCA has always worked to fulfill its mandate through integrated services. Today, its mission is to advance gender equity.

YWCA Metro Vancouver is a local organization participating in the broader YWCA movement. Started in England in 1855, the YWCA movement includes all YWCA organizations. The YWCA movement operates at three levels: local, national, and world. As a local YWCA, YWCA Metro Vancouver is an independent entity, governed by its own Board of Directors following its own mission statement. Alongside other local Canadian YWCAs, YWCA Metro Vancouver is a member of the YWCA of Canada. Founded in 1893, the YWCA of Canada is a national YWCA that serves as coordinating body for all local YWCAs in Canada. Delegates from local YWCAs attend National Conventions every four years to elect the National Board of the YWCA of Canada and collaborate on policy and priorities. The YWCA of Canada has been a member of World YWCA since 1895. Founded in 1894, the World YWCA coordinates and connects national YWCAs globally. The YWCA of Canada elects Canadian delegates to attend the World YWCA Council every four years to determine policies and priorities for the World YWCA.

Although a member of the YWCA of Canada, YWCA Metro Vancouver is an autonomous entity, with organizational policy implemented by members via the elected Board of Directors. Elected annually from and by YWCA Metro Vancouver members, the Board of Directors is responsible for managing the affairs of the full organization, including policy- and priority-setting, strategic planning, budget management, and decision-making based on committee recommendations. The Board works with the Leadership Team, originally known as the Management Team, to accomplish this work. The Leadership Team is composed of key YWCA staff. The Board also recruits and employs the CEO, or the Executive Director before 1998, who acts as Head of Staff. The CEO partners with the Chair of the Board, called the President before 2002. YWCA Metro Vancouver staff members report to their supervisors who report to the CEO, committee members report to chair-people who report to the Chair of the Board, the CEO and Chair partner and report to the Board, and the Board is responsible to the membership.

YWCA Metro Vancouver has changed its priorities, policies, and name according to the identified needs of its membership. Founded as the Vancouver Young Women’s Christian Association, YWCA Metro Vancouver’s name has been through several iterations and meanings. One concerns the “C” present in “YWCA.” In 1965, the Vancouver YWCA brought forth a proposal to the YWCA of Canada for membership to be open to anyone regardless of religion. Four years later, this proposal was brought up by the Vancouver and Winnipeg YWCAs, and officially adopted. Although founded as a Christian organization, YWCA Metro Vancouver membership is now open to any who wish to join, regardless of gender or religion. YWCA Metro Vancouver identifies as a secular organization, but has kept the “C” in its name due to the influence of Christianity in its legacy. Additionally, in 2011 the organization changed its name to YWCA Metro Vancouver to “reflect [its] commitment serving communities throughout the region spanning Burnaby, Surrey, the Tri-cities, Maple Ridge, Langley/Aldergrove, Abbotsford, New Westminster, Richmond and North Vancouver” (“About the YWCA: Our Story”).

YWCA Metro Vancouver uses an integrated service model, considering the context of Vancouver and characteristics of the community served to inform its work. Early services included housing, an Employment Bureau, and Traveller’s Aid aimed at job-seeking young women new to Vancouver. Additional programs and services were influenced by priorities regularly identified by the organization. To provide these young women with social opportunities and improve their employment prospects, the YWCA began its fitness programs and adult education courses in the 1910s. Due to the outbreak and aftermath of World War I, in the 1920s YWCA provided counselling and sewing services for military hospitals, expanded its Health Education department, housed soldiers and their families, and assisted in resettling orphans, refugees, and soldiers’ families. The organization shifted its programming from a focus on Bible studies and church-going to personal and professional development programs and social and educational clubs. In response to the Great Depression in the 1930s, the YWCA focused its services towards providing affordable housing to homeless women and offering classes and training in marketable skills to assist women’s employability. Simultaneously, an emerging focus on international engagement, teenage programming, and leadership training in the 1930s led to Hi-Y programs for high schoolers and the founding in 1938 of the “Chinese Department” that would later become the Pender Y. A branch of the YWCA addressing Vancouver Chinatown’s community needs, Pender Y ran from 1944 to 1978. In the 1940s, the YWCA as a national movement focused on accommodating soldiers and their visiting relatives, as well as supporting women assuming additional responsibilities while male family members served overseas. After the war, the YWCA developed programs to advocate for women to keep their jobs and responsibilities when faced with the societal pressure to relinquish them. From the 1940s to 1960s, further developing YWCA programs and services were decentralized to branch YWCAs, including the West Vancouver Community Association and Vancouver East Community Y, among others. The YWCA responded to the Baby Boom of the 1950s by gearing its services to help mothers at every stage of motherhood. By the 1960s and 1970s, the YWCA identified priorities including leadership development, financial development, and social action. The organization became more vocal on Canadian and international social issues, prioritized transient youth and domestic abuse survivors, and expanded its employment guidance, counselling services, and mentorship programming. Munroe House, Canada’s first long-stay transition home for women and their children escaping abuse, opened in 1979. In the 1980s and 1990s, the YWCA identified childcare for teenage, working, and/or single mothers as an unfulfilled need and opened several childcare centres. Since the early 2000s, YWCA Metro Vancouver has focused on affordable housing, employment programs, ending gender-based violence, fitness and education, legal supports, and universal childcare. Several Vancouver-based community service organizations have found their beginnings as YWCA Metro Vancouver services before separating and becoming independent, including MOSAIC and Big Sisters.

YWCA Metro Vancouver continues to be an important and active part of its community.

References:
“About the YWCA: Our Story.” YWCA Metro Vancouver, 2023, https://ywcavan.org/our-story.

The origins of the Wongs’ Benevolent Association in Canada date back to 1912; the Wong Wun Sun Society and the Wong Kung Har Tong Society 黃江夏堂 were founded among numerous Chinese societies providing support to early Chinese immigrants within a racist white society. The Wongs' Association was formed in 1970 when the two founding Wongs' societies merged.

Overseas Chinese formed membership-based social service and mutual aid societies organized by surname/clan and home villages/districts. They provided support in the areas of housing, employment, banking and loans, immigration and legal services, political organizing, English language services and education, and burials.

Membership within the Wongs’ Benevolent Association is bound by the surname Wong 黃 (and 王 to a lesser extent). Members share ancestral roots in the districts of Toisan 台山 and Hoiping 開平 in the southern province of Guangdong 廣東 in China.

In Vancouver, the Association’s legacies include the Mon Keang Chinese School 文彊學校 and Hon Hsing Athletic Club 漢升體育會, both founded in the era of the Chinese Exclusion Act. In the post-war period, the Association is known for playing a significant role in the founding of the Chinese Cultural Centre of Greater Vancouver.

The Women's Research Centre (WRC) was founded in 1973 and emerged out of the BC Women's Studies Association. The Women's Research Centre was a feminist organization involved with research intended to promote action to change women's situations. The Centre maintained links with other women's organizations across Canada and responded to requests from women's groups and institutions regarding the project and organizational development, government and institutional responses to women's issues, and public and professional education. The objective of the Women's Research Centre was to provide individual women and community-based women's groups with the information, analyses, and/or skills they needed in order to take action on issues of concern to them. The research results were used in workshops, seminars, and consultations and published in various pamphlets, reports, and books which were later distributed to women's groups and other interested organizations. The Women's Research Centre was a registered, non-profit society with an annually elected board of directors and a policy collective composed of ten members of the Centre, who met monthly to make decisions on the overall policy and direction of the Centre and its various projects. In addition, an advisory committee, composed of representatives from across Canada, met once a year to provide information and to review the Centre's plan from a national perspective. The Centre's work was carried out by research committees composed of volunteers. The volunteers were made up of women who were both interested in and had the ability to contribute to a particular research area. At least one member of the policy collective sat on each research committee. The Women's Research Centre was funded by an operations grant from the Secretary of State Women's Program. In addition, the Centre also received grants or contracts from federal, provincial, and municipal departments and agencies and funding from private foundations for specific research projects. The Women's Research Centre disbanded in 2000.

The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (W.I.L.P.F.)was founded in 1915 at The Hague by women active in the suffrage movements in Europe and America who wished to end the First World War and to insure that no further wars occurred. The League began its work in Canada in 1920 in Vancouver, led by Dorothy Steeves and Laura Jamieson, with Lucy Woodsworth, Agnes McPhail and Violet McNaughton among its members. The League's work has been to promote peace education and to campaign for disarmament and anti-militarism. During World War II it opposed the introduction of military cadet training in schools and it has investigated textbooks which glorified war. In 2001, the Vancouver branch joined with the Toronto branch to start a Canadian section.

In 1998 the Women's History Network of British Columbia applied to the BC Heritage Trust for funding to support an oral history project to document the career of Margaret Ormsby. The Women's History Network is a non-profit society established in 1995 to "enhance interest and encourage activity in women's history across British Columbia." Membership consists of educational institutions, local history groups, museum and archives representatives, women's organizations and other interested persons and groups. The Ormsby project sought to clarify her contribution to the historiography of the province, her role as educator and teacher, and her personality and her relationship to other people. With the support of Heritage Trust, the WHN engaged the services of Ruth Sandwell, who prepared interview questions, conducted the interviews and developed a comprehensive subject index to the interviews.

The "Women and Sustainable Development: Canadian Perspectives" conference was initially proposed in 1992 and was held at UBC in May 1994. A Steering Committee of grass-roots activists planned it, researchers, public policy practitioners, and leaders of non-governmental organizations from the feminist, environment, development, and peace communities. It was led and chaired by Ann Dale, then Senior Associate at SDRI. The conference produced over 100 policy recommendations leading to the 1995 UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing.

Formed in October, 1985 by the Honourable Austin Pelton of the Social Credit government, the Wilderness Advisory Committee received submissions from the public regarding the use of selected wilderness areas throughout British Columbia. The Committee was based out of Vancouver and chaired by Bryan Williams.

For twenty-years from 1905 to 1925 White Studio was Broadway's foremost photographer of stage production. Founded by New York saloonkeeper Luther S. White (1857-1936), this photographic agency employed a series of cameramen from 1903 to 1936, some talented, some not, who recorded hundreds of performers and thousands of productions of the American stage.