Above: One of the first 2026 World Council planning meetings, in Toronto in late 2023
By Kerry Reilly, National General Secretary of YMCA Scotland and Global Events Coordinator at World YMCA
Perhaps it’s an unusual place to begin, but some of my earliest childhood memories are of events and conferences. My dad was a Methodist minister working within the Methodist Youth Department in Ireland, often involved in organising gatherings with young people across Ireland and Europe. At the age of six, my summer holiday was going to a European Methodist Youth Conference with my mum and dad in Switzerland and then driving to the former East Germany, crossing the Berlin wall to meet some of my dad’s colleagues there.
My parents were also deeply involved in peace work across Ireland, working to build bridges between divided communities. My mum worked alongside Mairead Corrigan and Betty Williams, the Nobel Peace Prize winners who founded the Peace People movement. At the age of seven I joined my mum at the front of a Peace People rally in Belfast, sitting with her and the other speakers on the main stage. In 1981 I went to a summer festival at the Northern Ireland Peace and Reconciliation centre called Corrymeela. Two guests at the festival left a lasting impression on me – the first was Mother Teresa who was there to talk about how Christians should practise love and forgiveness amidst conflict, adding her voice to the efforts for peace and reconciliation. The second was the singer songwriter Tom Paxton and I remember the emotions of the adults listening to him as he sang “The Death of Stephen Biko”.
Childhood memories form the adult
Why are these memories so vivid? Psychologists tell us that early childhood memories often have strong emotional significance, forming part of how we construct identity and core values. For me, those conferences and events left lasting impressions with me of how people meeting together with a shared vision for peace and unity could bring hope and a desire for transformation. They also speak to the power of transformational leaders and performers like Mother Teresa and Tom Paxton.
Yet these memories stand in contrast to other, less positive ones of growing up during the conflict of “the Troubles” in Northern Ireland. I recall armed soldiers at the end of our street, bomb scares or shootings diverting my walk home from school, and late-night journeys on country roads being interrupted by red lights of cars ahead being stopped at checkpoints — with a palpable sense of worry in the car about whether we were being stopped by an army or paramilitary checkpoint. One memory that stands out for me as a young child was going on a picnic with my grandmother and running ahead into a small thicket of trees to play hide and seek, only to be confronted by soldiers with guns camouflaged amongst the trees. I can still remember my fear in that moment and running back to the safety of my grandmother.
When we subsequently left Northern Ireland for Scotland at the age of ten, I still remember the sense of freedom at the absence of constant security: walking into shops without bag checks, strolling through city centres without soldiers and living without the constant drone of helicopters flying over our house.
On leadership and the YMCA
All of these childhood memories and experiences have profoundly influenced the leader that I strive to be today, my faith, my values and my sense of purpose in life. For many years now one of my favourite quotes is from Micah 6:8: “And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” These words challenge me, and I believe challenge our YMCA every day as we strive for peace, justice and equity, as we practice compassion, and as we endeavour to lead with humility in transforming our communities.
I’ve now worked in the YMCA for over 30 years, and one of the things that constantly strikes me is the privilege of being so closely connected to colleagues worldwide. When war, conflict, tragedy or natural disaster hits in a country, we don’t hear about it as a distant headline. We hear about it through colleagues who are there on the ground. So often the YMCA is present, responding, and showing up in the midst of community needs.
During COVID-19, that global presence was so evident. Across the world, local and national YMCAs provided food, essentials, and vital support to families in need. Time and again, the YMCA turned up. That sense of solidarity, of being a global family committed to community, was never clearer.
And so to World Council in Toronto, July 2026
Since the Pandemic, it feels like our world is changing rapidly and being disrupted more unpredictably than before. Rapid advances in artificial intelligence, political polarisation, rising intolerance around immigration and refugees, new wars and increased conflict in Europe and the Middle East all contribute to that growing sense of disruption.
I feel genuinely honoured to be leading the planning for World Council.
Through a lifetime of conferences and events, from childhood onwards, and now as a YMCA professional, I believe profoundly in the power of gathering people together, in person and face-to-face. There is nothing else that compares to it.
World Council 2026 offers us a unique opportunity as a global family to come together, to face disruption honestly, and to ask how we are adapting. It’s a space to grapple with how we show up with and for young people, with and for communities, with and for our YMCAs. It’s a moment to recommit ourselves to Vision 2030 and to shaping the world that we want to see.
World Council will not solve every challenge we face. But it will give us a rare and vital space to ask big questions together:
- How are we adapting to the disruption of our times?
- How are we showing up in our communities with integrity, courage, and creativity?
- How are we embodying our commitment to Vision 2030?
- And how are we equipping ourselves to carry the YMCA movement forward?
My hope for World Council is that it will be a safe, creative and challenging space: a place where delegates not only gain new connections, ideas, and perspectives but also feel emboldened and equipped to face the challenges of disruption to shape a better future for young people, for communities and for the YMCA.
Because at its heart, World Council is not simply about what happens in a conference venue. It is about how we return home changed — ready to live out our shared values and vision in our own communities and countries, and to continue building a YMCA that shows up where it matters most.
Kerry Reilly is the National General Secretary of the YMCA in Scotland and is seconded two days per week to work with World YMCA as the Global Events Coordinator. Her work on large scale event planning started in 2001 when she was involved in contributing to the programme for the first YMCA Europe Prague Festival held in 2003. Since then, she has worked on the YMCA Europe Prague Festivals in 2008 and 2013, YMCA175 in 2019, YMCA World Council in 2022 and most recently the Vision 2030 Accelerator Summit in Mombasa in 2024.