Local Organizations and COVID-19: New Canaan YMCA 

For today’s Q&A with the head of a local organization, we interviewed Craig Panzano, executive director of the New Canaan YMCA. The Y’s doors are closed and the building is essentially shut down, though the organization launched virtual programming that includes on-demand and live workouts in areas such as yoga and pilates, as well as kids’ dance classes and sessions on nutrition. Some of the videos are live while others are pre-recorded, and the Y has had some 14,000 views on them since launch, Panzano said.

Here’s our interview.

Craig Panzano. Photo courtesy of the New Canaan YMCA

New Canaanite: The YCMA serves so many local people and in different ways. What has this been like for you all at the Y?

Craig Panzano: I think it’s very hard on everybody—the staff, myself, the board—to see an organization that recently completed a $20 million facility project a couple of years ago. We were serving a lot more people and in a lot more ways and to see it come crashing to a stop all of the sudden in one day was disheartening, to say the least. 

I imagine you are tracking the governor’s updates very closely. What is your hope or thought now with respect to some version of opening the doors again?

Well, the governor announced that camp is considered ‘essential services,’ and childcare, and there is a date of June 29th when we can start offering that service. There will be restrictions—the ratios and amount of people to serve will be reduced. So that is one way to start to serve community, and we are waiting for the go-ahead for the YMCAs to be able to start servicing people at the facility on a reduced level. 

So right now, for what I imagine is a major function of the YMCA, it’s a wait-and-see situation?

It is. It really is. There are a couple of Ys that have opened in the country, like the Y in Atlanta, and a few more are opening up because states are relaxing their restrictions, and so we are watching them and how they are operating. But you are right, it is a wait-and-see right now.

You all pivoted quickly to start offering a lot of programming virtually. Are there additional programs that are coming online or other ways you are planning to use technology that your members may want to know about? 

I have to say, I think we are doing about as much as we are capable of. And the staff, this is the first time we have done it, really. The staff rose to the challenge and made a tremendous effort. We will continue do it and enhance it. We also created a non-virtual program where we had a senior outreach task force that called 627 members over the age of 70 to make sure they are doing OK, just to connect and make sure doing all right. And we have senior workout videos. Right now we are so facility-based and people-based that it’s hard to do things to serve the community other than what we are doing virtually and trying to reach out to people. I think everybody is facing that challenge. 

The YMCA staff is a big part of the organization and many of its longtime members feel closely connected to the people who work there. How are they faring?

They are getting paid and they are getting their benefits. Everybody is still on the payroll. So we are proud and glad to be able to do that for them.  I think everybody is anxious to get back to work and have a purpose. The people who work for Y thrive on helping people, so I think they are really glad and they are really appreciative that we are still paying them, but they want to come back. They want to do what they’re trained to do and what they love to do, and they are all looking for this to slow down and hopefully we can ease back into it when we get the all-clear. 

What is your message to your membership and the wider community?

We will be back. ‘Tough times don’t last, tough people do.’ And the YMCA has been here for hundreds of years, since the late-1800s. And we will be here for that long again. So for the YMCA, this is a necessary interruption, but we will be back for sure, better and stronger and doing things we never thought about like the virtual programming. I think the Y is like some other organizations in the town and it is a key part of the community in New Canaan—the library and the New Canaan Community Foundation and New Canaan CARES.  We will continue to serve the community. We will be back.