Secretary General’s oral report to the 21st YMCA World Council

Toronto, Canada 

Monday 20 July 2026 

World YMCA Secretary General, Carlos Sanvee 

“It is well with my soul.”  

Many of you will know the famous hymn of that name, written in the 1870s by an American lawyer, Horatio Spafford, whose life was marked by tragedy after tragedy. 

He wrote the hymn not because the world was well, but because something in him held that the world’s verdict was not the final verdict. 

He felt what he called a ‘blest assurance’ – which came from his faith – that all is well, and that all will be well.

Madam President and Members of the World YMCA Executive Committee, 

dear Sisters and Brothers from every corner of our worldwide YMCA Movement, I welcome you to the 21st World Council.

Likewise I welcome our esteemed partners – those we know so well, and those we are getting to know. 

If I may, I name and welcome United Nations Assistant Secretary General for Youth Affairs, Dr Felipe Paullier, and all my colleagues from the ‘Big Six’ youth empowerment organisations.

We are so proud to work with you. 

Four years and 12 days ago, we left the last World Council in Aarhus, Denmark.

We had just adopted YMCA Vision 2030, our first ever co-created and truly shared global strategy, which had been three years in the making. ​ 

​It was an ‘agreement’, yes, but it was more: it was a ‘promise’, a ‘pact’,  – for me, it was a ’covenant‘. 

We walked out into a world that was still recovering from one of the deepest collective wounds since WWII : the Covid pandemic. 

You all know: we had no budget for Vision 2030, and no implementation plan. 

No clear road ahead.  

What’s more, we were still bruised and still in the process of reimagining ourselves after Covid, and – perhaps? – we were just wondering whether we actually had the appetite to achieve all that we had just promised.

All we left Aarhus with was hope. 

And faith: faith in God, faith in this Movement, and faith that – somehow -​​ it would, as Horatio said, be ’well’. 

Let me share what the four years between Aarhus and Toronto felt like for me as the Secretary General of the World YMCA.  

Out-side the YMCA …  

I saw the context: the world of which we are a part. 

Conflict. 

Polarisation. 

Injustice often left uncontested. 

Countries and people looking inwards and backwards. 

Mental strain, in so many forms. 

Climate anxiety.  

The weight of unemployment crushing a generation of young people who deserved better.  

I saw a global breakdown of trust – more than that, a breakdown of relationship at almost every level.  

Yes, we did see mobilization against these things – especially by young people, often in the most unlikely places – and that was a source of hope, or of espoir, in my language.

But it was the désespoir – the despair – which held the upper hand. 

Meanwhile in-side the YMCA … 

I saw the challenges which I felt and which so many of you felt.  

The pressure of raising funds to keep our aspirations alive when the resources are stretched in every direction.

The tension of our fragmented structures pulling in different directions.  

The demands for better governance – legitimate, necessary …. but relentless.  

I could see the gap between what we had promised in Aarhus and what we could actually make possible.  

I embodied all of those tensions – literally, they were here, in my body. 

And yet, in all this, there was something I didn’t expect.  

Members, many of you, reaching out.  

Not for a strategic update, and not for a programme report.  

But for and with a word of encouragement. 

There were prayers; and there were offers of solidarity from every region of this worldwide YMCA Movement, in every language, in every kind of crisis.  

People reached out to me, just as they reached out to each other, and they asked: are we still together? are we still walking?  

Every time, the answer was YES – Yes, we are.  

We kept walking, not because we had obvious and detailed and resourced plans – we didn’t! – but because we had that covenant.  

And because the God who holds this Movement held us in all our imperfection, and kept us walking.  

I’m not going to report in detail on everything we did these last four years.  

I know absolutely how important that detail is, and you’ll get it in brief from me …

you’ve had it in brief from President Soheila …

and you will get it in several documents which I will mention later.  

Instead, and in my response to what I have called our covenant, I will share three inter-related stories: the story of me, the story of us, and the story of now.

This is my story, and I hope that it can say something about our shared story.

I’ve already pointed to the story of me, and how I felt carried by you. 

So what is the ‘story of us’, these last four years?

Most organisations like ours have Strategic Plans. 

But we made a covenant.

And covenants are not measured by compliance. 

They are measured by transformation.

The ‘story of us’ these last four years is one of transformation.

A deep and radical transformation that was not directed from Geneva, but which grew organically, individually and collectively.

It is one part of the ‘Transform’ you see on our World Council logo. 

There is the out-side world transforming all around us, as I have said, and there is the in-side world, the YMCA, in transformation too.

And that transformation grew from the Movement itself. 

Across every region, in every language, in every context, National Movements, Area Alliances and local YMCAs began building, connecting and innovating around Vision 2030.

I do not ask you to take my word for this. 

The evidence sits in four documents, which I offer as an integral part of my report, and which together tell the story better than I can.

First, the consolidated World YMCA report, which takes our four Annual Reports, 2022 to 2025, and turns them into one. 

This is the journey: the process and the collective road we have travelled.

Second, the Compendium of nearly 90 worldwide Vision 2030 projects, which we issued in June. 

These are the projects themselves, drawn from your Movements and told in your words, not mine. 

For each entry there is a section on quantifiable impact, outcomes as much as outputs, in hard figures.

Third, the Global Impact Report, which re-presents the research I launched earlier this year. 

This is the measured result, and it is still a work in progress. 

It will be presented in full on Friday at 11:45. 

58 National Movements have taken part so far, and for it to be fully meaningful and accurate I want that figure to be 100 by 30 October.

It’s fascinating reading. 

I invite you to digest what it says about:

how we recalibrate the figure of the worldwide YMCA reaching ‘over 60 million lives every year’; how many National Movements are involved in each Pillar; how far Vision 2030 is part of their own national planning; and what are the reasons they give for embracing it. 

Fourth, this report, Voices of  Transformation which tells a four-year story through the voices of 12 remarkable YMCA people, younger and older, from across our Movement. 

So if my address today is my personal story, this document is others’ story.

The ‘story of us’, then, is that we are transforming. 

And here I follow in the footsteps of our President, Soheila, who just 30 minutes ago presented to you so many of the achievements of these four years. 

It was refreshing for me, and I hope for you, to hear our collective work summarised in her words, not mine. 

Hers are the eyes of oversight and of ultimate governance responsibility, from ‘one step removed’. 

Her headlines were simple and striking: 

the four Vision 2030 Pillars airborne; 

the four Movement Support Functions airborne; 

record operational funds raised and, very importantly, redistributed across the Movement.

Colleagues, across these four documents and these four years, three trends stand out beneath those headlines.

First, the evidence shows we developed a truly shared direction. 

Vision 2030 was our shared strategic framework, and we have been busy making it practical, to help National Movements align local priorities with global aspirations.

Implementation has progressed at different speeds, reflecting not so much how willing we are, as how diverse we are, and the diversity of the contexts in which we work. 

But we now have not just a common language and frame of reference, but common ways of acting together.

Second, the evidence shows how far we invested in building shared knowledge, learning, products and systems, in order to make Vision 2030 happen. 

Communities of practice have connected YMCAs across regions. 

At the last count, more than 80 groups across the Movement are working together, sharing, planning, creating and implementing Vision 2030, from the four Pillars to the four Movement Support Functions that support them, and in many other areas too. 

We have carried out global research on our Pillars to aid local implementation; 

We have developed the ‘case for change’ in three of the four Pillars; 

We have built global strategic partnerships that offer practical opportunities to National Movements; 

We have continued to invest in young people through leadership programmes such as the Change Agents; 

and we have strengthened our governance and financial systems to improve accountability and resilience.

Third, the evidence shows that we have begun to turn that shared and strengthened framework into what matters: actual impact in responding to local needs. 

Across the four Pillars we are developing indicators of success;

we have collated the stories and statistics of that success; 

and we have created more opportunities to learn from one another. 

Innovation has always been the prelude to impact.

Just look at how the Igniting Youth Futures initiative has grown through a strategic partnership with a range of philanthropic, research and NGO partners, to become a fully funded initiative in India, South Africa and Spain.

It has already reached 10,000 under-served young people with Meaningful Work training and opportunities. 

All of this has been enhanced by the growing international status and engagement of the World Alliance, which has brought us new partnerships and new resources.

World Council, that is the package you are voting to approve today: so not only this oral report, but those four extra documents too.

But colleagues, I would not be standing before the highest body of this Movement if I only told you what went well.  

So let me highlight three areas of unfinished business – much of it ‘good business’, but all of it ‘unfinished business’. 

First, Movement strengthening remains uneven.  

Too many National Movements are structurally fragile – underfunded, over-dependent on their partners and external funding, and under-supported.  

We have better Movement Strengthening tools now, but tools in themselves do not mean transformation.  

We have not yet built the sustained institutional architecture that this Movement deserves.  

Second, in a constantly changing world,  our current global ‘architecture ‘ – or structure – needs to be modernised.  

It was designed for a different world.  

Some of the coordination failures between Geneva and the Area Alliances are indeed real.  

The concerns raised about a perceived ‘Eurocentrism’ – raised inside and outside this Movement – are also real.  

A more decentralised structure – with shared priorities, distributed leadership, and resources that follow the Movement rather than the Headquarters – is the direction we want to head in.  

Third, we have not yet been able to articulate what our YMCA Christian identity means in the 21st Century. 

The profoundly good news is that over 3 years of conversation – to a greater and lesser extent involving half of our membership, and more than 700 people – we have talked and listened with respect and humility, and found far more that unites us than divides us. 

One thing has been made abundantly clear, that we are a Christian organisation, not just in our roots but in our commitment to the service of one and all, based on the Christian values. 

But something else is just as clear, that we are not in unison as to how to express that Christian identity, and how far to take it.  

Simply, there are more questions to answer, and we have already identified what some of them are. 

After this session, we will decide whether we will continue the conversation. 

It’s my personal hope that we will not leave this business unfinished. 

I’d sincerely like to thank all who been part of this Conversation and who will continue to be so. 

Friends, this is my honest portrait of where we are.  

So ‘the story of us’ – as I see it – is a story of a transformed Movement, and ‘a different animal’ from 4 years ago. 

A story of major transformation, but a story of incomplete transformation. 

A story of a Movement that kept its covenant in the areas that required courage, but which owes to its members the structural transformation that can make the next covenant possible.  

And which can really only be judged by the impact it has on one billion young people. 

I wish to thank you all for writing this story together. 

To my World YMCA team, to our National General Secretaries, to the Executive Committee, to the Global Staff Team – my sincere and heartfelt thanks to you all.

So let my final chapter be the ‘story of now’. 

I have shared stories today. 

There was Hiroshima; there were the 90 stories of the Compendium; there were the 12 individual stories of the Vision 2030 journey. 

Here is another.

This is a story about trust.  

And trust is hard to find in the world right now.  

As Canada’s Prime Minister, Mark Carney, so eloquently stated at the World Economic Forum earlier this year, the old world order is in the past.

We are living through a ‘rupture’ where multilateral institutions which have held us together for so long are losing trust and legitimacy.  

Governments are losing the trust and confidence of their own citizens.  

The private sector is expected to deliver profit … but not always expected to deliver profit with genuine purpose. 

In this room, we are privileged to be joined by exceptional partners who do have purpose, but they are the minority. 

And in that vacuum – in the space left by retreating institutions and broken promises – something is happening that the world has not yet fully named.  

Friends, more and more, trust is moving local.  

Because people trust their community.  

Because they trust the organisation that was present before the crisis and that will be present after it.  

They trust the network that accompanied them rather than administered them. 

Because, in short, they trust people like the YMCA.

Now, please … just imagine what that trust can mean when it’s multiplied ‘at scale’, above all, with, and for, those 1 billion ‘GenZedders’ who crave belonging and hope. 

We are 120 National YMCA Movements, reaching  more than 60 million lives each year. 

We are present in the communities where governments have withdrawn, and markets have never arrived.  

We are present with young people before they become a statistic or a protest or a geopolitical ‘problem’.  

We are present with civil society partners who need a convener they can trust.  

We are present with the private sector partners who are discovering that you can’t build anything sustainable in a community that doesn’t trust you.  

We are not just a federation of YMCAs. 

We are a ‘Movement’ – a global community defined by common goals and values which is always, as the word implies, in motion.

Dare I say it, we have many of the characteristics of a nation … as a large group of people connected by shared history, culture, and identity.

We are global and local, and all points in between.

We are unique in holding trust at the local level, while exercising it at the global level.  

That is the only power that will hold when everything else is fracturing.  

So I come to the end of this report not with a summary but with a statement. 

It’s this: the world needs ‘trust brokers’, and the YMCA is a trust broker – a place of hope, of belonging, of dignity. 

This is what we are, and it’s also what the Movement of perpetual motion is becoming.  

All because we kept walking, journeying together.  

‘Ignite’ was the spark, in Aarhus in July 2022.  

‘Accelerate’ was what we did towards and beyond Mombasa in October 2024.   

‘Transform’ is the evidence we see before us here in Toronto in July 2026. 

The world needs a transformed YMCA – a YMCA of impact. 

For all our imperfections and for all the world’s imperfections, we have the covenant, we have the trust, and we have what Horatio Spafford called the ‘blest assurance’ of who we are and why we are. 

I think and I hope and I pray that we can all indeed say, “It is well with OUR souls.”