Amilia was the Exclusive Volunteers Sponsor at the 21st YMCA World Council
Held once every four years, YMCA World Council brings together delegates from more than 100 countries to shape the future of the global YMCA Movement. This year's edition, the 21st, carried the theme Transform. Amilia went into it as the exclusive Volunteer Sponsor, sending 16 employees from across Canada to volunteer on-site all week, contributing more than 160 volunteer hours in total. Our role went well beyond a booth and a banner!
A special thank you to YMCA Canada for the flawless organization of the entire week, and to YMCA of Greater Toronto for the warm hospitality that made every delegate feel at home. Events at this scale don't run themselves, and it showed in every detail.
A grateful nod to YMCA Quebec too, who brought a taste of home to an international stage with a Quebec-inspired evening that had delegates from 100+ countries singing along.
Being the exclusive Volunteer Sponsor meant showing up the way we try to show up for our customers every day: present, useful, and genuinely invested. Our team, representing groups from across the company, guided delegates through cultural excursions around Toronto, helping create a welcoming environment where every participant felt included. Alongside that, we were fielding product questions and explained how Amilia SmartRec can support the Y movement to smoother operations and fulfilled members.
That's what being a real partner looks like in practice. Not a logo on a lanyard, but people willing to help with what is needed in the moment, whether that's a question about registration software or a Toronto touring tip!
A few members of our volunteer team alongside partners of the YMCA movement
The takeaway: Real partnership shows up in the small moments as much as the big ones.
What struck us most was the scale of the YMCA movement around the world. Different languages, different program models, different funding realities represented across all those delegations, and still a shared sense of purpose that was hard not to feel. Volunteering alongside that, shoulder to shoulder with the customers we serve every day, is exactly what we mean when we talk about our "Better Together" value: collaboration is how we work, how we learn, and how we win.
The engagement toward Amilia specifically was palpable too. Conversations kept going long past the scheduled time, and that's exactly why having 16 of us on the ground, rather than just a booth, mattered so much.
Here's where things got genuinely eye-opening for us. In North America, the membership model is the default assumption: people join a Y, pay memberships, and revenue funds programs. Talking with delegates from outside North America, we learned that many Ys skip that model almost entirely.
Instead, a lot of these YMCAs fund their community programs, especially services for people in need, through hotel and hostel operations. The Y isn't just a recreation center; it's also a place to stay, and that revenue is what keeps mission-driven programming running.
One thread ran through nearly every conversation, regardless of country, language or model: technology, and increasingly AI, as a lever for growth. Delegates want tools that free up staff time and reinvest it into mission programming, not just back-office efficiency. AI came up specifically as a way to cut administrative load and help leaders anticipate community needs instead of just reacting to them.
It would be easy to build a recreation platform assuming every YMCA looks like the ones down the street. World Council was a good reminder that the Y movement is bigger and more varied than any one region's version of it, and that our job as a tech partner is to understand that variety, not flatten it.
Thank you to everyone who stopped by to chat, ask a question, or ask for directions. It was an honor to be part of Council 2026.
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