Healthy Communities • Support the Y • YMCA Donors
“We need to make up for lost time” | Akosua Matthews shares her motivations for supporting the Y
31 January 2022 - by Nicole Meredith
The YMCA of Greater Toronto is a charity, and it’s thanks to our incredible donors and volunteers that we can connect people with essential services, chances to better their lives, and a sense of community and belonging. In this new series, Why I Give, our donors share what inspires them to give back, and what supporting our charity means to them.
The YMCA of Greater Toronto’s Vice-Chair of the Board of Directors, Akosua Matthews, kicks off this series.
Inspiration to give
When asked what motivates her to donate to and volunteer with the Y, Akosua says, “My reasons have changed over the years. I recently became a new parent, and I’m also a human rights lawyer and I’ve worked on a lot of Indigenous children’s rights cases — so a focus on children and youth is becoming both a personal and professional interest for me.”
The pandemic has only sharpened this focus. “It has been an exhausting and challenging experience for everyone,” Akosua says, “but children and youth have the least amount of resilience to deal with this type of situation. I think we’re going to be contending with the impacts for generations.”
Supporting the YMCA of Greater Toronto is one way she wants to help over the long term. “For me, it’s about contributing to a charity that has a track record of providing services for and prioritizing the needs of children and youth — not only recreational needs, but also baseline life needs,” Akosua explains. “It’s important to me to support a charity that’s going to stick around for a long time, because these are the types of issues that will take generations to deal with.”
Why the Y
Akosua notes she doesn’t volunteer with many organizations. “What’s special about the Y,” she says, “is we understand that health is much more than medical health,” she says. “It’s holistic. It is communitarian; you can’t just be a healthy individual, it’s about being a healthy individual amongst a healthy community. This approach is something we’re still having to advocate for, but the Y gets it, and it’s a big reason why it’s my favourite charity to work with.”
This view of health as holistic and communitarian goes hand-in-hand with Akosua’s focus on supporting children and youth. “It’s not just for the child and family in need,” she explains. “I see it as being something that affects us all. Childhoods are so short, you have a small window to really make a meaningful impact; if you don’t take advantage of it, the window closes. And the downstream effects are horrendous.”
Vision for change
To prevent those effects, Akosua suggests changes must be made upstream. She says, “For me, it’s about a future where any child can go to school in person, supported with wraparound services of the sort that the Y provides — so that when they pursue post-secondary education and look for employment as they get older, they have the ability to do those things and meaningfully participate.
“It’s much harder to participate in school and work if basics are not fulfilled, and if you don’t feel like you’re part of a community, and you don’t have healthy recreational outlets. As a society, we have to get those things right, and it starts with children and youth; if we fail them, we’re really failing our collective future.”
Practical supports for youth
As she explains her vision for that collective future, Akosua compellingly blends this high-level, long-term thinking with a sense of urgency, seeing the importance of reaching children and youth right now.
“The thing that concerns me most is we have lost our connection to many youth, partly because services have had to be delivered remotely, and not every youth has the tech support they need to engage in that way,” she says. “We need to make up for lost time in the sense that we really need to re-establish the connections we used to have with a lot of children and youth who we normally would have served in person, and who have been negatively impacted by this pandemic. We need to meet their basic life needs and also their recreational and community needs.”
Investing in charities that deliver results
When asked what it means to her to “build back better,” Akosua says: “The answer requires that we look beyond ourselves; it’s not just a problem that individuals acting on their own are going to solve. We need to look around and ask what organizations, groups, and networks will have this kind of impact.
“For me, it’s the Y: a charity that’s going to translate more value for your donor dollars, because it has experience, it has a history that’s survived all kinds of societal conditions — not only this pandemic, but all kinds of challenges over the decades.
“That’s what I’m looking for, and I think more and more people are going to be looking around after the last two years and thinking about where they are going to put their dollars to help rebuild. I think they should be looking for serious organizations that have the capacity and history to tackle these types of issues — and I believe the Y is absolutely that organization.”
To hear from other YMCA supporters and learn what inspires them to give to our charity, visit ymcagta.org/Our-Donors.
Akosua Matthews is a senior associate at Kastner Lam LLP, leading the firm’s state accountability work. Her practice includes civil litigation, public law, human rights claims, coroner’s inquests, and advising on policy and legislative matters. A Rhodes Scholar and graduate of the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, Akosua holds a B.A. (Hons) from the University of Manitoba and an MPhil in Comparative Social Policy from the University of Oxford.
The YMCA of Greater Toronto’s Vice-Chair of the Board of Directors, Akosua Matthews, kicks off this series.
Inspiration to give
When asked what motivates her to donate to and volunteer with the Y, Akosua says, “My reasons have changed over the years. I recently became a new parent, and I’m also a human rights lawyer and I’ve worked on a lot of Indigenous children’s rights cases — so a focus on children and youth is becoming both a personal and professional interest for me.”
The pandemic has only sharpened this focus. “It has been an exhausting and challenging experience for everyone,” Akosua says, “but children and youth have the least amount of resilience to deal with this type of situation. I think we’re going to be contending with the impacts for generations.”
Supporting the YMCA of Greater Toronto is one way she wants to help over the long term. “For me, it’s about contributing to a charity that has a track record of providing services for and prioritizing the needs of children and youth — not only recreational needs, but also baseline life needs,” Akosua explains. “It’s important to me to support a charity that’s going to stick around for a long time, because these are the types of issues that will take generations to deal with.”
Why the Y
Akosua notes she doesn’t volunteer with many organizations. “What’s special about the Y,” she says, “is we understand that health is much more than medical health,” she says. “It’s holistic. It is communitarian; you can’t just be a healthy individual, it’s about being a healthy individual amongst a healthy community. This approach is something we’re still having to advocate for, but the Y gets it, and it’s a big reason why it’s my favourite charity to work with.”
This view of health as holistic and communitarian goes hand-in-hand with Akosua’s focus on supporting children and youth. “It’s not just for the child and family in need,” she explains. “I see it as being something that affects us all. Childhoods are so short, you have a small window to really make a meaningful impact; if you don’t take advantage of it, the window closes. And the downstream effects are horrendous.”
Vision for change
To prevent those effects, Akosua suggests changes must be made upstream. She says, “For me, it’s about a future where any child can go to school in person, supported with wraparound services of the sort that the Y provides — so that when they pursue post-secondary education and look for employment as they get older, they have the ability to do those things and meaningfully participate.
“It’s much harder to participate in school and work if basics are not fulfilled, and if you don’t feel like you’re part of a community, and you don’t have healthy recreational outlets. As a society, we have to get those things right, and it starts with children and youth; if we fail them, we’re really failing our collective future.”
Practical supports for youth
As she explains her vision for that collective future, Akosua compellingly blends this high-level, long-term thinking with a sense of urgency, seeing the importance of reaching children and youth right now.
“The thing that concerns me most is we have lost our connection to many youth, partly because services have had to be delivered remotely, and not every youth has the tech support they need to engage in that way,” she says. “We need to make up for lost time in the sense that we really need to re-establish the connections we used to have with a lot of children and youth who we normally would have served in person, and who have been negatively impacted by this pandemic. We need to meet their basic life needs and also their recreational and community needs.”
Investing in charities that deliver results
When asked what it means to her to “build back better,” Akosua says: “The answer requires that we look beyond ourselves; it’s not just a problem that individuals acting on their own are going to solve. We need to look around and ask what organizations, groups, and networks will have this kind of impact.
“For me, it’s the Y: a charity that’s going to translate more value for your donor dollars, because it has experience, it has a history that’s survived all kinds of societal conditions — not only this pandemic, but all kinds of challenges over the decades.
“That’s what I’m looking for, and I think more and more people are going to be looking around after the last two years and thinking about where they are going to put their dollars to help rebuild. I think they should be looking for serious organizations that have the capacity and history to tackle these types of issues — and I believe the Y is absolutely that organization.”
To hear from other YMCA supporters and learn what inspires them to give to our charity, visit ymcagta.org/Our-Donors.
Akosua Matthews is a senior associate at Kastner Lam LLP, leading the firm’s state accountability work. Her practice includes civil litigation, public law, human rights claims, coroner’s inquests, and advising on policy and legislative matters. A Rhodes Scholar and graduate of the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, Akosua holds a B.A. (Hons) from the University of Manitoba and an MPhil in Comparative Social Policy from the University of Oxford.
