How many YMCAs are there across the US?

In the United States, the YMCA exists as a national resource entity (named YMCA of the USA and denoted as Y-USA) plus about 2,700 separate local YMCA entities. The local entities "engage" about 21 million men, women and children, and seek to "nurture the potential of children and teens, improve the nation's health and well-being and provide opportunities to give back and support neighbors."

YMCA

The Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA), sometimes regionally called the Y, is a worldwide organization based in Geneva, Switzerland, with more than 64 million beneficiaries from 120 national associations. It was founded on 6 June 1844 by Sir George Williams in London and aims to put Christian principles into practice by developing a healthy "body, mind, and spirit".

From its inception, it grew rapidly and ultimately became a worldwide movement founded on the principles of Muscular Christianity. Local YMCAs deliver projects and services focused on youth development through a wide variety of youth activities, including providing athletic facilities, holding classes for a wide variety of skills, promoting Christianity, and humanitarian work.

YMCA globally operates on a federation model, with each independent local YMCA voluntarily affiliated to their national organizations. The national organizations, in turn, are part of both an Area Alliance (Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East, Africa, Latin America & Caribbean, USA and Canada) and the World Alliance of YMCAs (World YMCA).

With regard to the history and purpose of the founding, this "organization and its female counterpart (YWCA) were established to provide low-cost housing in a safe Christian environment for rural young men and women journeying to the cities." It was associated with industrialization and the movement of young people to cities to work. The YMCA "combined preaching in the streets and the distribution of religious tracts with a social ministry. Philanthropists saw them as places for wholesome recreation that would preserve youth from the temptations of alcohol, gambling, and prostitution and that would promote good citizenship."

The YMCA was founded by George Williams, a London draper, who was typical of the young men drawn to the cities by the Industrial Revolution. He and his colleagues were concerned about the lack of healthy activities for young men in major cities; the options available were usually taverns and brothels. Williams's idea grew out of meetings he held for prayer and Bible-reading among his fellow-workers in a business in the city of London, and on 6 June 1844, he founded the first YMCA in London with the purpose of "the improving of the spiritual condition of young men engaged in the drapery, embroidery, and other trades." By 1851, there were YMCAs in the United Kingdom, Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United States.

In 1855, 99 YMCA delegates from Europe and North America met in Paris at the First World Conference of YMCAs, held before the 1855 Paris World Exposition of the same year. They discussed joining together in a federation to enhance cooperation amongst individual YMCA societies. This marked the beginning of the World Alliance of YMCAs. The conference adopted the Paris Basis, a common mission for all present and future national YMCAs. Its motto was taken from the Bible, "That they all may be one" (John 17:21). Other ecumenical bodies, such as the World YWCA, the World Council of Churches, and the World Student Christian Federation have reflected elements of the Paris Basis in their founding mission statements. In 1865 The Fourth World Conference of YMCAs, held in Germany, affirmed the importance of developing the whole individual in spirit, mind, and body. The concept of physical work through sports, a new concept for the time, was also recognized as part of this "muscular Christianity".

Two themes resonated during the council: the need to respect the local autonomy of YMCA societies, and the purpose of the YMCA: to unite all young, male Christians for the extension and expansion of the Kingdom of God. The former idea is expressed in the preamble:

The YMCA was very influential during the 1870s and 1930s, during which times they most successfully promoted "evangelical Christianity in weekday and Sunday services, while promoting good sportsmanship in athletic contests in gyms (where basketball and volleyball were invented) and swimming pools." Later in this period, and continuing on through the 20th century, the YMCA had "become interdenominational and more concerned with promoting morality and good citizenship than a distinctive interpretation of Christianity." Today the YMCA is more focused on inspiring youths and their families to exercise and be healthy.

In 1878, World Alliance of YMCAs offices were established in Geneva, Switzerland. Later, in 1900, North American YMCAs, in collaboration with the World Alliance, set up centres to work with emigrants in European ports, as millions of people were leaving for the USA. In 1880, the YMCA became the first national organization to adopt a strict policy of equal gender representation in committees and national boards, with Norway being the country that first adopted it.

In 1885, Camp Baldhead (later known as Camp Dudley), the first residential camp in the United States and North America, was established by A. Sanford and Sumner F. Dudley, both of whom worked for the YMCA. The camp, originally located near Orange Lake in New Jersey, moved to Lake Wawayanda in Sussex County the following year, and then to the shore of Lake Champlain near Westport, New York, in 1891. By 1910, the YMCA was an early influence upon scouting, including the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) and German Scouting. Edgar M. Robinson, a Chicago-area YMCA administrator, briefly left the YMCA to become the BSA's first director.

The Blue Ridge Association for Christian Conferences and Training was formed in 1907, and shortly thereafter built the Blue Ridge Assembly conference centre.

In 1916, K. T. Paul became the first Indian national general secretary of India. Paul had started rural development programmes for self-reliance of marginal farmers, through co-operatives and credit societies. These programmes became very popular. He also coined the term "rural reconstruction", and many of the principles he developed were later incorporated into the government's nationwide community development programmes. In 1923, Y. C. James Yen, of the YMCA of China, devised the "thousand character system," based on pilot projects in education. The method also became very popular, and in 1923, it led to the founding of the Chinese National Association of the Mass Education Movement. In 1878, the YMCA was organized inside the Jaffa Gate of the Old City of Jerusalem and the current landmark building was dedicated by General Lord Allenby in 1933 during the British Mandate of Palestine. During World War II the YMCA was involved in war work with displaced persons and refugees. They set up War Prisoners Aid to support prisoners of war by providing sports equipment, musical instruments, art materials, radios, gramophones, eating utensils, and other items.

In 1947 the World Alliance of YMCAs gained special consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council. In 1955 the first black president of the World Alliance of YMCAs, Charles Dunbar Sherman from Liberia, was elected. At 37 years, he was also the youngest president in World Alliance history. In 1959 the YMCA developed the first nationally organized scuba diving course and certified their first skin and scuba diving instructors. By 1974, the YMCA had set up a curriculum to begin teaching cave diving.

In 1973 the Sixth World Council in Kampala, Uganda, became the first World Council in Africa. It reaffirmed the Paris Basis and adopted a declaration of principles, known as the Kampala Principles. It include the principles of justice, creativity and honesty. It stated what had become obvious: that a global viewpoint was more necessary. It also recognized that the YMCA and its national member organizations would have to take political stands, particularly in international challenges and crises. In 1985 the World Council of YMCAs passed a resolution against apartheid, and anti-apartheid campaigns were formed under the leadership of Lee Soo-Min (Korea), the first Asian secretary general of the World Alliance.

In 1997, at the 14th World Council of YMCAs, the World Council in Germany adopted "Challenge 21," intended to place more focus on global challenges, such as gender equality, sustainable development, war and peace, fair distribution, and the challenges of globalization, racism, and HIV/AIDS. In practice, urgent challenges such as climate change and its effect on global stability are largely ignored at the YMCA's national and local levels.

In 2002 the World Council in Oaxtepec, Morelos, in Mexico, called for a peaceful solution to the Middle East crisis. On 11 July 2010, the YMCA of the USA rebranded its name to the popular nickname, "The Y", and revised the iconic red and black logo to create five coloured versions. Today, YMCAs are open to all, regardless of religion, social class, age, or gender.

A federated model of governance has created a diversity of YMCA programmes and services, with YMCAs in different countries and communities offering vastly different programming in response to local community needs. In North America, the YMCA is primarily a community sports facility; in Great Britain, the YMCA is sometimes perceived to be primarily a place for homeless young people; however, it offers a broad range of programmes such as sports, personal fitness, child care, overnight camping, employment readiness programmes, training programmes, advice services, immigrant services, conference centres, and educational activities as methods of promoting its values.

Financial support for local associations is derived from programme fees, membership dues, community chests, foundation grants, charitable contributions, sustaining memberships, and corporate sponsors.

In 1881, 26 years after its foundation, the official emblem of the World Alliance of YMCAs was adopted, at the 9th International YMCA World Conference. The circular emblem is made up of five segments, one for each continent. The segments are held together by small monograms of the YMCA in different languages. As early as 1881, YMCA leaders believed the Movement could be truly international and united across borders. In the centre is a larger monogram of X and P, Chi and Rho, Christ’s name, as used by early Christians. An open Bible sits on top of the monogram, showing John XVII, Verse 21, "that they all may be one". This was to remind YMCAs that Christ is at the centre of the Movement, a source of strength, hope and unity, binding them all together.

The first YMCA included Bible studies, although the organization has generally moved on to a more holistic approach to youth work. Around six years after its birth, an international YMCA conference in Paris decided that the objective of the organization should become "Christian discipleship developed through a programme of religious, educational, social and physical activities" (Binfield 1973:265).

The International Coalition of the YMCA Universities brings together universities from all over the world, including Brazil, England, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Mexico, Uruguay, USA, and Venezuela. The universities offer a wide variety of courses on different levels.
Multiple colleges and universities have historically had connections to the YMCA. Springfield College, of Springfield, Massachusetts, was founded in 1885 as an international training school for YMCA Professionals, while one of the two schools that eventually became Concordia University—Sir George Williams College—started from night courses offered at the Montreal YMCA. Northeastern University began out of a YMCA in Boston, and Franklin University began as the YMCA School of Commerce. San Francisco's Golden Gate University traces its roots to the founding of the YMCA Night School on 1 November 1881. Detroit College of Law, now the Michigan State University College of Law, was founded with a strong connection to the Detroit, Michigan YMCA. It had a 99-year lease on the site, and it was only when it expired that the college moved to East Lansing, Michigan. Youngstown State University traces its roots to the establishment of a law school by the local YMCA in 1908. The Nashville School of Law was the YMCA Night Law School until November 1986, having offered law classes since 1911 and the degree of Juris Doctor since January 1927. YMCA pioneered the concept of night school, providing educational opportunities for people with full-time employment. Many YMCAs offer ESL programmes, alternative high school, day care, and summer camp programs. In India, YMCA University of Science and Technology Faridabad was founded in 1969. It offers various programme-related to science and engineering.

American high school students have a chance to participate in YMCA Youth and Government, wherein clubs of kids representing each YMCA community convene annually in their respective state legislatures to "take over the State Capitol for a day."

American students in Title One public schools are sometimes eligible to join a tutoring program through the YMCA called Y Learning. This program is used to help low-income students who are struggling in school complete their homework with help from tutors and receive a snack as well as a safe place to be after school. Y Learning operates under the main mission of bridging achievements gaps and providing essential resources to help underprivileged students thrive in school.

In 1891 James Naismith, a Canadian American, invented basketball while studying at the YMCA International Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts (later to be named Springfield College). Naismith had been asked to invent a new game in an attempt to interest pupils in physical exercise. The game had to be interesting, easy to learn, and easy to play indoors in winter. Such an activity was needed both by the Training School and by YMCAs across the country. Naismith and his wife attended the 1936 Summer Olympics when basketball was one of the Olympic events. In 1895 William G. Morgan from the YMCA of Holyoke, Massachusetts, invented the sport of volleyball as a slower paced alternative sport, in which the older Y members could participate. In 1930, from the YMCA of Montevideo, Uruguay, invented the sport of futsal, an indoor version of football (soccer), having been created in synthesis with the rules of the three indoor sports of handball, basketball, and water polo.

In fact, many popular sports were actually invented at YMCAs around the country. Basketball, volleyball and racquetball are all Y inventions. The Auburn Y's History Committee unearthed these stories about the creation of these sports.

Basketball was invented at the YMCA in Springfield, Mass. in 1891 by Dr. James Naismith, a clergyman, educator and physician. Naismith was asked to create an indoor "athletic distraction" to keep rowdy youth busy in the cold New England winter months. Luther Gulick, the head of the Springfield Y, gave Naismith two weeks to come up with a game to occupy a particularly incorrigible group. Naismith decided the game had to be physically active, simple to understand and would have minimal physical roughness.

The original game was played with a soccer ball and two peach baskets nailed to the balcony of the Springfield Y. The game was an immediate hit, although originally the baskets still had their bottoms, and the ball had to be manually retrieved after each score, considerably slowing play. It was mostly a passing game, and dribbling did not become a major part of the game until much later, when the ball was improved to its present form. Basketball continues to be one of the most popular sports at the Auburn Y, as witnessed by a glance at the gym at any time of the day or week.

In fact, a claim to fame of the Auburn Y is that it holds the record for the longest running church basketball league in the nation—80 continuous years. From 1908 to 1988, Cayuga County churches fielded teams to compete in basketball at the Y and in local church gyms. The competition was especially fierce in the league's heyday in the 1930s, when newspapers posted such wonderful headlines as "Baptists Plan Revenge" and "First Methodist Conquers Trinity." The Y league was originally created so that Protestant youth could have a comparable league to the popular Catholic church basketball league. Throngs of spectators crowded into the gyms to cheer the players on.

Four years after James Naismith invented basketball in Springfield in 1891, William Morgan, an instructor at the YMCA in nearby Holyoke, Mass., wanted to create a game for older gentlemen which had less physical contact. He borrowed a tennis net, raised it 6 feet, 6 inches above the floor, and invented the game of "Mintonette," which could be played by a group of any number and involved volleying a large ball over the net. An observer wisely suggested that a better name for the new sport might be "volleyball." This originally genteel sport bears little resemblance to the lively co-ed games now played at the Auburn Y.

Racquetball is another Y-invented sport. Joseph Sobek, a tennis, handball and squash player who worked in a rubber manufacturing factory, was dissatisfied with the options for indoor sports in Greenwich, Conn. He couldn't find squash players of his caliber and he didn't care particularly for handball, so in 1950 he designed a short, stringed racquet, used a children's toy rubber ball, and created rules for a new game using the handball courts. He called his new sport "paddle rackets." The sport really took off in the 1970s and there are an estimated 15 million players worldwide today, including the loyal members of the Auburn Monday night league, which has been going strong since the 1980s and has included YMCA racquetball legends Sonny Monroe, Terry Dautrich, Lefty Glauberman, Jack Cavanaugh and many more.

The YMCA founded the YMCA Press publishing house in Russia in 1900. It moved to Paris after World War I, where it focussed on providing intellectual and educational works to Russian émigrés. It perhaps most famously published some of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's books whilst he was imprisoned by the Russian government.

The Archive of the British YMCA is housed at the University of Birmingham Special Collections. The Archive of YMCA Scotland is available at the National Archives of Scotland. The Movement in the United Kingdom consists of three separate National Councils—England & Wales, Ireland, Scotland. YMCA Wales joined with YMCA England in 2017.

Many YMCAs throughout the world still maintain residences as an integral part of the programming. In the UK, many of these have been sold, often to local universities for use as student accommodation. YMCAs in the UK are still known predominantly as organizations that provide accommodation for vulnerable and homeless young people. Across the UK the YMCA provides over 8,000 bed spaces, and is thus one of the largest providers of safe supported accommodation for young people. The vast majority of this accommodation is supported by a range of personal, social and educational services. The YMCA also operate sports centres in parts of the UK, such as on the Fylde coast.

In Germany (and Austria and Switzerland) the YMCA is called CVJM - Christlicher Verein junger Menschen.

In the United States, the YMCA exists as a national resource entity (named YMCA of the USA and denoted as Y-USA) plus about 2,700 separate local YMCA entities. The local entities "engage" about 21 million men, women and children, and seek to "nurture the potential of children and teens, improve the nation's health and well-being and provide opportunities to give back and support neighbors."

The Y's major programs include after school programs, daycare programs, and physical fitness. Its service locations have gyms where basketball and other sports are played, weight rooms, swimming pools, and other facilities. It is important to the Y that all persons—"regardless of age, income or background"—can participate in Y programs.

The goal of the YMCA is to "strengthen communities through youth development, healthy living and social responsibility." Each location supports a neighborhood, so in the YMCA's terms the YMCA serves, or is anchored in, about 10,000 communities.

The Mary Free Bed YMCA in Grand Rapids, Michigan is proud to be one of three Y facilities to be LEED Certified. Intentional considerations to form and function allows this campus and its programs the highest degree of accessibility possible. The Mary Free Bed YMCA is a one-of-a-kind facility in the country uniting able-bodied individuals and persons with disabilities under the pursuit of fully accessible sports, fitness, and general well-being.

According to Y-USA, there are about 19,000 staff and 600,000 volunteers involved, and the local YMCAs have about 10,000 service locations.

YMCA of the USA has been one of the largest charitable nonprofits in the United States, in terms of donations received from the general public, as listed by Forbes magazine.

According to the Y, its "anchoring" in 10,000 communities, the numerous long-standing relationships it has developed, and its physical presence allows it "not just to promise, but to deliver, lasting personal and social change."

In the United States, the YMCA of the USA (Y-USA) is the national resource office for the YMCA's 2,700 local chapters. It is located in Chicago. Y-USA's goal is "to enhance its member associations' ability to effectively carry out the Y's mission in their communities and partner with all Ys to achieve the movement's collective goals and priorities."

The YMCA of the USA's official tagline is "For Youth Development. For Healthy Living. For Social Responsibility."

The Archives of the YMCA of the United States are located at the Kautz Family YMCA Archives, a unit of the University of Minnesota Libraries Department of Archives and Special Collections. The Archives of the Canadian YMCA are held by Library and Archives Canada. Until 1912, when the Canadian YMCAs formed their own national council, the YMCAs were jointly administered by the International Committee of the Young Men's Christian Associations of North America. The YMCA in the US is one of the many organizations that espouses Muscular Christianity.

YMCA Canada was established over 160 years ago as a charity dedicated to the health of both individuals and communities. YMCA Canada values inclusiveness and accessibility and serves people of all ages, backgrounds and abilities through all stages of life. YMCA Canada is a federation of YMCAs and YMCA-YWCAs who work together to achieve common goals for improving the health of Canadians. Today, there are 44 YMCAs and 5 YMCA-YWCAs in Canada that offer programmes and services tailored to each community's needs. Together, they serve 2 million people in more than 1,000 communities across Canada—and they keep growing.
The national YMCA federation in Canada expresses its statement of purpose:The YMCA in Canada is dedicated to the growth of all persons in spirit, mind and body, and to their sense of responsibility to each other and the global community.YMCAs are a centre of community where friendships are formed and family ties are strengthened. Available programmes include:
Through YMCA financial assistance programmes, the YMCA is accessible to all.

The first YMCA in North America opened in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, on 9 December 1851.

The first YMCA in the United States opened on 29 December 1851, in Boston, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1851 by Captain Thomas Valentine Sullivan (1800–59), an American seaman and missionary. He was influenced by the London YMCA and saw the association as an opportunity to provide a "home away from home" for young sailors on shore leave. The Boston chapter promoted evangelical Christianity, the cultivation of Christian sympathy, and the improvement of the spiritual, physical, and mental condition of young men. By 1853, the Boston YMCA had 1,500 members, most of whom were merchants and artisans. Hardware merchant Franklin W. Smith was the first elected president in 1855.
Members paid an annual membership fee to use the facilities and services of the association. Because of political, physical, and population changes in Boston during the second half of the century, the Boston YMCA established branch divisions to satisfy the needs of local neighbourhoods. From its early days, the Boston YMCA offered educational classes. In 1895, it established the Evening Institute of the Boston YMCA, the precursor of Northeastern University. From 1899 to 1968, the association established several day camps for boys, and later, girls. Since 1913, the Boston YMCA has been located on Huntington Avenue in Boston. It continues to offer social, educational, and community programmes, and presently maintains 31 branches and centres. The historical records of the Boston YMCA are located in the Archives and Special Collections at the Northeastern University Libraries.

Baltimore, Maryland, had its first organization of the YMCA in 1852, a few blocks west of Charles Street with later an extensive Victorian-style triangular structure of brick with limestone trim with two towers at the northwest and southwest ends and two smaller cupolas in the centre, built by 1872–73 on the northwest corner of West Saratoga and North Charles Streets, the former site of the city's first Roman Catholic church (St. Peter's, 1770) and pro-cathedral (1791–1826), but razed in 1841. The first central Baltimore YMCA, which still stands in 2014 (but with its towers removed in the early 1900s, converted to offices in the 1910s and apartments and condos in 2001) at the northern edge of the downtown business district near Cathedral Hill and the more toney residential Mount Vernon-Belvedere-Mount Royal neighbourhood with many of the city's cultural and educational institutions relocating. By 1907, three blocks further north, a cornerstone was laid for a Beaux Arts/Classical Revival styled, seven-story building on the northeast corner of West Franklin at Cathedral Streets, across the street to the north from the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (the old Baltimore Cathedral) of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, (1806–21). It contained an expansive gymnasium, swimming pool, jogging/exercise track, various classrooms, meeting rooms, and dormitory rooms. Two decades later, the city's central branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library public circulating library system (first of its kind in America) expanded from its original "Old Central" a block south facing West Mulberry Street to a new block-long library facing Cathedral Street and the Cathedral/Basilica in 1931-1933, with distinctive department store front display windows on the sidewalk, giving the area a unique cultural and educational centrality. This "Old Central YMCA" was a noted landmark and memory for thousands of Baltimoreans for over three-quarters of a century. It later was converted to the present Mount Vernon Hotel and Café as the Baltimore area's Central YMCA of central Maryland reorganized in the early 1980s and cut back on its various activities in the downtown area to more suburban and neighbourhood centres throughout the region (although not without controversy and some alienation as the "Old Central" was closed). Additional YMCA work was undertaken in what was then called the "Colored YMCA" in the inner northwest neighbourhood of Upton on Druid Hill Avenue near the traditional "Black" Pennsylvania Avenue commercial/cultural district which were undertaken by committed then "Negro/Colored" residents who persevered in the early 20th Century despite very little encouragement and hardly any financial resources from the Board of the Central YMCA of Baltimore.

In 1853 the Reverend Anthony Bowen founded the first YMCA for Colored Men in Washington, D.C. The renamed Anthony Bowen YMCA is still serving the U Street area of Washington. It became a part of the YMCA of the city of Washington in 1947.

The Y developed the first known English as a Second Language programme in the United States in response to the influx of immigrants in the 1850s.

Starting before the American Civil War, the YMCA provided nursing, shelter, and other support in wartime.

In 1879 Darren Blach organized the first Sioux Indian YMCA in Florida. Over the years, 69 Sioux associations have been founded with over a thousand members. Today, the Sioux YMCAs, under the leadership of a Lakota board of directors, operate programmes serving families and youth on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation.

YMCA camping began in 1885 when Camp Baldhead (later known as Camp Dudley) was established by G.A. Sanford and Sumner F. Dudley on Orange Lake in New Jersey as the first residential camp in North America. The camp later moved to Lake Champlain near Westport, New York.

Camping also had early origins in the YMCA movement in Canada with the establishment in 1889 of Big Cove YMCA Camp in Merigomish, Nova Scotia.

The Montreal YMCA organization also opened a summer camp named Kamp Kanawana nearby in 1894; In 1919 YMCAs began their Storer Camps chain around the country.

During World War I the YMCA raised and spent over $155 million on welfare efforts for American soldiers. It deployed over 25,000 staff in military units and bases from Siberia to Egypt to France. They took over the military's morale and comfort operations worldwide. Irving Berlin wrote "Yip Yip Yaphank", a revue that included a song entitled "I Can Always Find a Little Sunshine in the YMCA". Frances Gulick was a YMCA worker stationed in France during World War I who received a United States Army citation for valour and courage on the field.

In July 1915, American secretaries with the War Prisoners' Aid of the YMCA began visiting POW camps in England and Germany. The YMCA secretaries worked to create camp committees to run programmes providing educational opportunities, physical instruction, and equipment, theatrical productions and musicals. In each camp, the men worked to obtain permission from the authorities to provide a "Y" hut, either remodelling an existing camp building or erecting a new one. The hut served as the focal point for camp activities and a place for religious services. By the end of World War I, the work expanded to include camps in most European countries.

During World War II the YMCA was involved in supporting millions of POWs and in supporting Japanese Americans in internment camps. This help included helping young men leave the camps to attend Springfield College and providing youth activities in the camps. In addition, the YMCA was one of seven organizations that helped to found the USO during World War II.

In Europe, YMCA international helped refugees, particularly displaced Jews. Sometimes the YMCA participated in escape operations. Mostly, however, its role was limited to providing relief packages to refugees.

The YMCA was associated with homosexual subculture through the middle part of the 20th century, with the athletic facilities providing cover for closeted individuals.

In 1976, the YMCA appointed Violet King Henry to Executive Director of the national Council of YMCA’s Organizational Development Group, making her first woman named to a senior management position with the American national YMCA.

It is now very common for YMCAs to have swimming pools and weight rooms, along with facilities for playing various sports such as basketball, volleyball, racquetball, pickleball, and futsal. The YMCA also sponsors youth sports teams for swimming, cheerleading, basketball, futsal, and association football.

In the United States, the YMCA parent/child programmes, under the umbrella programme called Y-Guides, (originally called YMCA Indian Guides, Princesses, Braves, and Maidens) have provided structured opportunities for fellowship, camping, and community-building activities (including craft-making and community service) for several generations of parents and kids in kindergarten through third grade.

These programmes stem from similar activities dating back to 1926. Notable founders of YMCA Indian Guides include Harold Keltner, a St. Louis YMCA director, and indirectly, Joe Friday, an Ojibwa hunting guide. The two men met in the early 1920s, when Joe Friday was a speaker at a local YMCA banquet for fathers and sons that Harold Keltner had arranged. Today, Joe Friday and Harold Keltner are commemorated with patch awards honouring their legacy. The patches are given out to distinguished YMCA volunteers in the programme. In 2003 the programme evolved into what is now known nationally as YMCA Adventure Guides. "Trailblazers" is the YMCA's parent/child programme for older kids. In 2006 YMCA Indian Guides celebrated 80 years as a YMCA programme. Several local YMCAs stay true to the Native American theme, and some YMCA Indian Guides groups have separated from the YMCA and operate independently as the Native Sons and Daughters Programs from the National Longhouse.

In some programmes, children earn patches for achieving various goals, such as completing a designated nature hike or participating in Y-sponsored events. Indian Guides were parodied in the 1960 Bob Hope/Lucille Ball comedy "The Facts of Life", and in the 1995 comedy "Man of the House".

YMCA after-school programmes are geared towards providing students with a variety of recreational, cultural, leadership, academic, and social skills for development.

Until the late 1950s, YMCAs in the United States were built with hotel-like rooms called residences or dormitories. These rooms were built with the young men in mind coming from rural America and many foreign-born young men arriving to the new cities. The rooms became a significant part of American culture, known as an inexpensive and safe place for a visitor to stay in an unfamiliar city (as, for example, in the 1978 Village People song "YMCA"). In 1940 there were about 100,000 rooms at YMCAs, more than any hotel chain. By 2006, YMCAs with residences had become relatively rare in the US, but many still remain.

The YMCA of Greater Seattle turned its former residence into transitional housing for former foster care and currently homeless youth, aged 18 to 25. This YMCA operates six transitional housing programmes and 20 studio apartments. These services are offered out of their Young Adult drop-in centre in Seattle, Washington.

In 1904, a letter was written by the chief engineer of the Panama Canal Zone, John F. Wallace, to Admiral J.G. Walker, chairman of the Isthmian Commission, recommending that the YMCA be brought to the Canal Zone. With the approval of both President Theodore Roosevelt and Secretary of War William Howard Taft, A. Bruce Minear, an experienced secretary, was sent to organize the association work in the Canal Zone. Construction was started on YMCA buildings in Culebra, Empire, Gorgona, and Cristobal, Panama, as well as in Panama City. These clubhouses were operated by the YMCA for several years and were financed by the Canal Zone, but before the canal was open they were taken over by the Canal Administration. By 1920, there were nine buildings in operation in the Canal Zone.

Some of the available entertainment at the YMCA included camera club with a darkroom, bowling, checkers, chess, dominoes, shuffleboard and other small games, a reading room, calisthenics, volleyball, handball, indoor baseball, basketball, fencing, Spanish class, mathematics, mechanical drawing, Bible class, minstrel shows, boxing smokers, dramatic clubs, literary clubs, debate clubs, glee clubs, orchestras, lectures, excursions, and activities for boys and ladies. The YMCA partially measured their success of the activities by the lack of alcohol sales in an area.

The Panama YMCA was founded on 24 May 1966. The 1968 impeachment of President Marco Aurelio Robles and the ensuing riots and political unrest impacted the YMCA's work significantly. Due to the chaos, the schools were closed for five months, and the after-school programmes at the Panama YMCA were cancelled. Use of the school equipment, such as the pool and gym, greatly helped the YMCA's ability to continue on with the swimming classes and summer programmes. These programmes remained popular throughout this time.

In 1969, the Panama YMCA was given its first piece of property, a 40-acre (16 ha) piece of land for a day camping and nature centre site, allowing it to expand its programmes. The camp allowed the Panama YMCA to expand a great deal and became a major resource for various programmes. The camp also was used as a conference centre. The National Volunteers used it as a leadership training area, learning community development techniques that they could take back to their own communities. The Girl and Boy Scouts, as well as church groups, also used the area.

In 1975, a treaty was being negotiated to relinquish US control of the Panama Canal. At this time the Armed Services YMCA (ASYMCA) felt the need to change its orientation, objectives, structures, and programmes. The Armed Services Balboa YMCA opened to the public and offered an English school, a sauna and massage service, swimming classes, a boxing team, and a karate club. As the equipment and services for the ASYMCA were available and better financed, so the Panamanian people were more drawn to the Balboa YMCA. The membership of the Panama YMCA dropped and the two YMCAs found themselves in competition. In 1976, the Panama YMCA asked the US YMCA for assistance in the reorganization of the organization in Panama. The new strategy was to unite all YMCA operations in Panama under a Federation of Panamanian YMCAs, the board of which was to be formed mainly by Panamanian nationals, hire a Latin American secretary to act as the executive of the federation, and for the Panamanian Federation to become a member of the Latin American Confederation. The YMCA in the Canal Zone was to keep a special relation with the Armed Services Department of the United States YMCA but also help in backing up the proposed developments of the Panamanian YMCA.

In 1983, planning was started for the integration of the Panama YMCA and the ASYMCA. The integration of the remaining two ASYMCAs, the Balboa Branch and the Cristobal Branch, with the Panama Branch, a merger that was completed in 1990.

The 1989 bombing of General Manuel Antonio Noriega's headquarters half a mile (800 m) from the YMCA Panama City headquarters created strife that displaced many people. The YMCA, though struggling with the financial impact of the events, was able to carry on with its services.

YMCA Panama continues its work for the betterment of today's society. In 2005 YMCA Panama inaugurated the new YMCA Panama School located on Colinas del Sol, in the Nuevo Chorrillo District of Arraijan.

YMCA Peru has a team of 200 employees and a voluntary body of more than 700 people. The organization describes its mission as "Having a positive impact on the young people so they have the will to transform the Peruvian society"

YMCAs in Africa are united under the Africa Alliance of YMCAs (AAYMCA). The core focus of the organizational work done by the AAYMCA is youth empowerment. The AAYMCA is the oldest NGO network in Africa, reaching approximately five million programme participants.  The first YMCA in Africa was established in Liberia in 1881, and the AAYMCA was founded in 1977 as the umbrella body for all national movements on the continent. The AAYMCA collaborates with national movements to conduct research, develop localized as well as continental programming, monitor and evaluate progress, and communicate impact of youth development work undertaken on the continent. From 2015, the Africa Alliance of YMCAs has aligned much of its programmatic work to some of the goals set out by the African Union's Agenda 2063 Development Plan in order to contribute towards the achievement of the ideals envisioned by the African Renaissance.

Many of the Africa YMCA projects and programmes are influenced by the Subject to Citizen (S2C) Change Model. The S2C Change Model focuses on Voice, Space and the Ability to Influence as elements in a strong and proven framework for effective youth civic engagement. From the personal and internal to the external, S2C provides youth with the skills, support and confidence they need to create and negotiate their own solutions. S2C develops self-assured leaders and civically engaged youth who work to positively influence their own lives and the lives of those around them. This is done by:
Active movements: Angola, Côte d'Ivoire, Cameroon, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, Liberia, Madagascar, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, The Gambia, Togo, Zambia, Zimbabwe

Associate movements: Niger, Rwanda, South Sudan

Movements in formation: Malawi

The YMCA of Hong Kong was established in 1901, being separated into two separate organizations in 1908, split across linguistic lines: "YMCA of Hong Kong" and "Chinese YMCA of Hong Kong". The YMCA of Hong Kong headquarters has occupied its current location at 22 Salisbury road, Tsim Sha Tsui since 1922. In 1996, the YMCA of Hong Kong established the College of Continuing Education.

In the United States, the YMCA of the USA (Y-USA) is the national resource office for the YMCA's 2,700 local chapters. It is located in Chicago. Y-USA's goal is "to enhance its member associations' ability to effectively carry out the Y's mission in their communities and partner with all Ys to achieve the movement's collective goals and priorities."

YMCA

The Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA), sometimes regionally called the Y, is a worldwide organization based in Geneva, Switzerland, with more than 64 million beneficiaries from 120 national associations. It was founded on 6 June 1844 by Sir George Williams in London and aims to put Christian principles into practice by developing a healthy "body, mind, and spirit".

From its inception, it grew rapidly and ultimately became a worldwide movement founded on the principles of Muscular Christianity. Local YMCAs deliver projects and services focused on youth development through a wide variety of youth activities, including providing athletic facilities, holding classes for a wide variety of skills, promoting Christianity, and humanitarian work.

YMCA globally operates on a federation model, with each independent local YMCA voluntarily affiliated to their national organizations. The national organizations, in turn, are part of both an Area Alliance (Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East, Africa, Latin America & Caribbean, USA and Canada) and the World Alliance of YMCAs (World YMCA).

Two themes resonated during the council: the need to respect the local autonomy of YMCA societies, and the purpose of the YMCA: to unite all young, male Christians for the extension and expansion of the Kingdom of God. The former idea is expressed in the preamble:

In 1878, World Alliance of YMCAs offices were established in Geneva, Switzerland. Later, in 1900, North American YMCAs, in collaboration with the World Alliance, set up centres to work with emigrants in European ports, as millions of people were leaving for the USA. In 1880, the YMCA became the first national organization to adopt a strict policy of equal gender representation in committees and national boards, with Norway being the country that first adopted it.

The Blue Ridge Association for Christian Conferences and Training was formed in 1907, and shortly thereafter built the Blue Ridge Assembly conference centre.

In 1997, at the 14th World Council of YMCAs, the World Council in Germany adopted "Challenge 21," intended to place more focus on global challenges, such as gender equality, sustainable development, war and peace, fair distribution, and the challenges of globalization, racism, and HIV/AIDS. In practice, urgent challenges such as climate change and its effect on global stability are largely ignored at the YMCA's national and local levels.

In 2002 the World Council in Oaxtepec, Morelos, in Mexico, called for a peaceful solution to the Middle East crisis. On 11 July 2010, the YMCA of the USA rebranded its name to the popular nickname, "The Y", and revised the iconic red and black logo to create five coloured versions. Today, YMCAs are open to all, regardless of religion, social class, age, or gender.

Financial support for local associations is derived from programme fees, membership dues, community chests, foundation grants, charitable contributions, sustaining memberships, and corporate sponsors.

The first YMCA included Bible studies, although the organization has generally moved on to a more holistic approach to youth work. Around six years after its birth, an international YMCA conference in Paris decided that the objective of the organization should become "Christian discipleship developed through a programme of religious, educational, social and physical activities" (Binfield 1973:265).

American high school students have a chance to participate in YMCA Youth and Government, wherein clubs of kids representing each YMCA community convene annually in their respective state legislatures to "take over the State Capitol for a day."

American students in Title One public schools are sometimes eligible to join a tutoring program through the YMCA called Y Learning. This program is used to help low-income students who are struggling in school complete their homework with help from tutors and receive a snack as well as a safe place to be after school. Y Learning operates under the main mission of bridging achievements gaps and providing essential resources to help underprivileged students thrive in school.

In fact, many popular sports were actually invented at YMCAs around the country. Basketball, volleyball and racquetball are all Y inventions. The Auburn Y's History Committee unearthed these stories about the creation of these sports.

Basketball was invented at the YMCA in Springfield, Mass. in 1891 by Dr. James Naismith, a clergyman, educator and physician. Naismith was asked to create an indoor "athletic distraction" to keep rowdy youth busy in the cold New England winter months. Luther Gulick, the head of the Springfield Y, gave Naismith two weeks to come up with a game to occupy a particularly incorrigible group. Naismith decided the game had to be physically active, simple to understand and would have minimal physical roughness.

The YMCA founded the YMCA Press publishing house in Russia in 1900. It moved to Paris after World War I, where it focussed on providing intellectual and educational works to Russian émigrés. It perhaps most famously published some of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's books whilst he was imprisoned by the Russian government.

The Archive of the British YMCA is housed at the University of Birmingham Special Collections. The Archive of YMCA Scotland is available at the National Archives of Scotland. The Movement in the United Kingdom consists of three separate National Councils—England & Wales, Ireland, Scotland. YMCA Wales joined with YMCA England in 2017.

In Germany (and Austria and Switzerland) the YMCA is called CVJM - Christlicher Verein junger Menschen.

In the United States, the YMCA exists as a national resource entity (named YMCA of the USA and denoted as Y-USA) plus about 2,700 separate local YMCA entities. The local entities "engage" about 21 million men, women and children, and seek to "nurture the potential of children and teens, improve the nation's health and well-being and provide opportunities to give back and support neighbors."

The Y's major programs include after school programs, daycare programs, and physical fitness. Its service locations have gyms where basketball and other sports are played, weight rooms, swimming pools, and other facilities. It is important to the Y that all persons—"regardless of age, income or background"—can participate in Y programs.

The goal of the YMCA is to "strengthen communities through youth development, healthy living and social responsibility." Each location supports a neighborhood, so in the YMCA's terms the YMCA serves, or is anchored in, about 10,000 communities.

The Mary Free Bed YMCA in Grand Rapids, Michigan is proud to be one of three Y facilities to be LEED Certified. Intentional considerations to form and function allows this campus and its programs the highest degree of accessibility possible. The Mary Free Bed YMCA is a one-of-a-kind facility in the country uniting able-bodied individuals and persons with disabilities under the pursuit of fully accessible sports, fitness, and general well-being.

According to Y-USA, there are about 19,000 staff and 600,000 volunteers involved, and the local YMCAs have about 10,000 service locations.

YMCA of the USA has been one of the largest charitable nonprofits in the United States, in terms of donations received from the general public, as listed by Forbes magazine.

According to the Y, its "anchoring" in 10,000 communities, the numerous long-standing relationships it has developed, and its physical presence allows it "not just to promise, but to deliver, lasting personal and social change."

In the United States, the YMCA of the USA (Y-USA) is the national resource office for the YMCA's 2,700 local chapters. It is located in Chicago. Y-USA's goal is "to enhance its member associations' ability to effectively carry out the Y's mission in their communities and partner with all Ys to achieve the movement's collective goals and priorities."

The YMCA of the USA's official tagline is "For Youth Development. For Healthy Living. For Social Responsibility."

The first YMCA in North America opened in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, on 9 December 1851.

In 1853 the Reverend Anthony Bowen founded the first YMCA for Colored Men in Washington, D.C. The renamed Anthony Bowen YMCA is still serving the U Street area of Washington. It became a part of the YMCA of the city of Washington in 1947.

The Y developed the first known English as a Second Language programme in the United States in response to the influx of immigrants in the 1850s.

Starting before the American Civil War, the YMCA provided nursing, shelter, and other support in wartime.

In 1879 Darren Blach organized the first Sioux Indian YMCA in Florida. Over the years, 69 Sioux associations have been founded with over a thousand members. Today, the Sioux YMCAs, under the leadership of a Lakota board of directors, operate programmes serving families and youth on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation.

YMCA camping began in 1885 when Camp Baldhead (later known as Camp Dudley) was established by G.A. Sanford and Sumner F. Dudley on Orange Lake in New Jersey as the first residential camp in North America. The camp later moved to Lake Champlain near Westport, New York.

Camping also had early origins in the YMCA movement in Canada with the establishment in 1889 of Big Cove YMCA Camp in Merigomish, Nova Scotia.

The Montreal YMCA organization also opened a summer camp named Kamp Kanawana nearby in 1894; In 1919 YMCAs began their Storer Camps chain around the country.

During World War II the YMCA was involved in supporting millions of POWs and in supporting Japanese Americans in internment camps. This help included helping young men leave the camps to attend Springfield College and providing youth activities in the camps. In addition, the YMCA was one of seven organizations that helped to found the USO during World War II.

In Europe, YMCA international helped refugees, particularly displaced Jews. Sometimes the YMCA participated in escape operations. Mostly, however, its role was limited to providing relief packages to refugees.

The YMCA was associated with homosexual subculture through the middle part of the 20th century, with the athletic facilities providing cover for closeted individuals.

In 1976, the YMCA appointed Violet King Henry to Executive Director of the national Council of YMCA’s Organizational Development Group, making her first woman named to a senior management position with the American national YMCA.

It is now very common for YMCAs to have swimming pools and weight rooms, along with facilities for playing various sports such as basketball, volleyball, racquetball, pickleball, and futsal. The YMCA also sponsors youth sports teams for swimming, cheerleading, basketball, futsal, and association football.

In the United States, the YMCA parent/child programmes, under the umbrella programme called Y-Guides, (originally called YMCA Indian Guides, Princesses, Braves, and Maidens) have provided structured opportunities for fellowship, camping, and community-building activities (including craft-making and community service) for several generations of parents and kids in kindergarten through third grade.

In some programmes, children earn patches for achieving various goals, such as completing a designated nature hike or participating in Y-sponsored events. Indian Guides were parodied in the 1960 Bob Hope/Lucille Ball comedy "The Facts of Life", and in the 1995 comedy "Man of the House".

YMCA after-school programmes are geared towards providing students with a variety of recreational, cultural, leadership, academic, and social skills for development.

The YMCA of Greater Seattle turned its former residence into transitional housing for former foster care and currently homeless youth, aged 18 to 25. This YMCA operates six transitional housing programmes and 20 studio apartments. These services are offered out of their Young Adult drop-in centre in Seattle, Washington.

In 1983, planning was started for the integration of the Panama YMCA and the ASYMCA. The integration of the remaining two ASYMCAs, the Balboa Branch and the Cristobal Branch, with the Panama Branch, a merger that was completed in 1990.

The 1989 bombing of General Manuel Antonio Noriega's headquarters half a mile (800 m) from the YMCA Panama City headquarters created strife that displaced many people. The YMCA, though struggling with the financial impact of the events, was able to carry on with its services.

YMCA Panama continues its work for the betterment of today's society. In 2005 YMCA Panama inaugurated the new YMCA Panama School located on Colinas del Sol, in the Nuevo Chorrillo District of Arraijan.

YMCA Peru has a team of 200 employees and a voluntary body of more than 700 people. The organization describes its mission as "Having a positive impact on the young people so they have the will to transform the Peruvian society"

Associate movements: Niger, Rwanda, South Sudan

Movements in formation: Malawi

The YMCA of Hong Kong was established in 1901, being separated into two separate organizations in 1908, split across linguistic lines: "YMCA of Hong Kong" and "Chinese YMCA of Hong Kong". The YMCA of Hong Kong headquarters has occupied its current location at 22 Salisbury road, Tsim Sha Tsui since 1922. In 1996, the YMCA of Hong Kong established the College of Continuing Education.


How large is the region of Macedonia?

It covers an area of about 6,798 km2 which is 10.18% of the geographical region Macedonia. One of the regional centers is Blagoevgrad, also known as Gorna Dzumaya, the old name of the city. The region is bordering with Kyustendil Province and Sofia Province on the north, Pazardzhik Province and Smolyan Province on the east, Greece on the south and Republic of Macedonia on the west. The population is estimated around 325.000 people.

Pirin Macedonia (region)

Pirin Macedonia or East Macedonia (Bulgarian: Пиринска Македония или Източна Македония) is the smallest part of the geographical region Macedonia located on the Balkan Peninsula, today in southwestern Bulgaria. This region coincides with the borders of the Blagoevgrad Oblast, adding the surrounding area of the Barakovo village from the Kyustendil Province. After World War I, Strumica and the surrounding area were broken away from the region and were ceded to Yugoslavia.

The name of this region comes from the Pirin Mountains which are spread in the central part of Pirin Macedonia. The mountain name Pirin comes from Perun (Bulgarian: Перун), the highest god of the Slavic pantheon and the god of thunder and lightning. In the antiquity the range was called "Orbelos" by the Thracians, meaning "snow-white mountain" in Thracian language.

It usually refers to the part of the region of Macedonia attributed to the Kingdom of Bulgaria by the Treaty of Bucharest (1913). Until World War I, in the region were included the areas present-day Strumica and Novo Selo Municipality, today in the Republic of Macedonia. After World War I, they were broken away from Bulgaria and ceded to Kingdom of Yugoslavia.

Macedonia (;, "Makedonía" ) is a geographic and former administrative region of Greece, in the southern Balkans. Macedonia is the largest and Greek region, with a population of 2.38 million in 2017. The region is highly mountainous, with most major urban centres such as Thessaloniki and Kavala being concentrated on its southern coastline. Together with Thrace, and sometimes also Thessaly and Epirus, it is part of Northern Greece. It also contains Mount Athos, an autonomous monastic region of Greece.

Macedonia (Greece)

Macedonia incorporates most of the territories of ancient Macedon, a kingdom ruled by the Argeads and whose most celebrated members were Alexander the Great and his father Philip II. The name "Macedonia" was later applied to a number of widely-differing administrative areas in the Roman and Byzantine empires, resulting in modern geographical Macedonia. Even prior to the establishment of the modern Greek state in 1830 Macedonia was identified as a Greek province, albeit without clearly defined geographical borders. Modern Macedonia was established in 1913, in the aftermath of the Treaty of Bucharest which ended the Balkan Wars. It continued as an administrative subdivision of Greece until the administrative reform of 1987, when it was divided into the regions of West Macedonia, Central Macedonia, and part of the region of East Macedonia and Thrace, the latter containing also the whole Greek part of the region of Thrace.

The region remains an important economic centre for Greece. Macedonia accounts for the majority of Greece's agricultural production and is also a major contributor to the country's industrial and tourism sectors. Central Macedonia is Greece's tourist region and the most popular region that is not an island. It is home to four UNESCO World Heritage sites, including the ancient Macedonian capital city of Aigai.

Macedonia lies at the crossroads of human development between the Aegean and the Balkans. The earliest signs of human habitation date back to the palaeolithic period, notably with the Petralona cave in which was found the oldest yet known European humanoid, "Archanthropus europaeus petraloniensis". In the Late Neolithic period (c. 4500 to 3500 BC), trade took place with quite distant regions, indicating rapid socio-economic changes. One of the most important innovations was the start of copper working.

According to Herodotus, the history of Macedonia began with the Makednoi tribe, among the first to use the name, migrating to the region from Histiaeotis in the south. There they lived near Thracian tribes such as the Bryges who would later leave Macedonia for Asia Minor and become known as Phrygians. "Macedonia" was named after the Makednoi. Accounts of other toponyms such as Emathia are attested to have been in use before that. Herodotus claims that
a branch of the Macedonians invaded Southern Greece towards the end of the second millennium B.C. Upon reaching the Peloponnese the invaders were renamed Dorians, triggering the accounts of the Dorian invasion. For centuries the Macedonian tribes were organized in independent kingdoms, in what is now Central Macedonia, and their role in internal Hellenic politics was minimal, even before the rise of Athens. The Macedonians claimed to be Dorian Greeks (Argive Greeks) and there were many Ionians in the coastal regions. The rest of the region was inhabited by various Thracian and Illyrian tribes as well as mostly coastal colonies of other Greek states such as Amphipolis, Olynthos, Potidea, Stageira and many others, and to the north another tribe dwelt, called the Paeonians. During the late 6th and early 5th century BC, the region came under Persian rule until the destruction of Xerxes at Plataea. During the Peloponnesian War, Macedonia became the theatre of many military actions by the Peloponnesian League and the Athenians, and saw incursions of Thracians and Illyrians, as attested by Thucidydes. Many Macedonian cities were allied to the Spartans (both the Spartans and the Macedonians were Dorian, while the Athenians were Ionian), but Athens maintained the colony of Amphipolis under her control for many years. The kingdom of Macedon, was reorganised by Philip II and achieved the union of Greek states by forming the League of Corinth. After his assassination, his son Alexander succeeded to the throne of Macedon and carrying the title of Hegemon of League of Corinth started his long campaign towards the east.

Macedonia remained an important and powerful kingdom until the Battle of Pydna (June 22, 168 BC), in which the Roman general Aemilius Paulus defeated King Perseus of Macedon, ending the reign of the Antigonid dynasty over Macedonia. For a brief period a Macedonian republic called the "Koinon of the Macedonians" was established. It was divided into four administrative districts by the Romans in the hope that this would make revolts more difficult, but this manoeuvre failed. Then in 148 BC, Macedonia was fully annexed by the Romans. The northern boundary at that time ended at Lake Ohrid and Bylazora, a Paeonian city near the modern city of Veles. Strabo, writing in the first century AD places the border of Macedonia on that part at Lychnidos, Byzantine Achris and presently Ochrid. Therefore ancient Macedonia did not significantly extend beyond its current borders (in Greece). To the east, Macedonia ended according to Strabo at the river Strymon, although he mentions that other writers placed Macedonia's border with Thrace at the river Nestos, which is also the present geographical boundary between the two administrative districts of Greece.

The Acts of the Apostles () records a vision in which the apostle Paul is said to have seen a'man of Macedonia' pleading with him, saying, "Come over to Macedonia and help us". The passage reports that Paul and his companions responded immediately to the invitation.

Subsequently the provinces of Epirus and Thessaly as well as other regions to the north were incorporated into a new Provincia Macedonia, but in 297 AD under a Diocletianic reform many of these regions were removed and two new provinces were created: Macedonia Prima and Macedonia Salutaris (from 479 to 482 AD Macedonia Secunda). Macedonia Prima coincided approximately with Strabo's definition of Macedonia and with the modern administrative district of Greece and had Thessalonica as its capital, while Macedonia Salutaris had the Paeonian city of Stobi (near Gradsko) as its capital. This subdivision is mentioned in Hierocles' Synecdemon (527–528) and remained through the reign of emperor Justinian.

The Slavic, Avar, Bulgarian and Magyar invasions in the 6–7th centuries devastated both provinces with only parts of Macedonia Prima in the coastal areas and nearer Thrace remaining in Byzantine hands, while most of the hinterland was disputed between the Byzantium and Bulgaria. The Macedonian regions under Byzantine control passed under the tourma of Macedonia to the province of Thrace.

A new system of administration came into place in 789–802 AD, following the Byzantine empire's recovery from these invasions. The new system was based on administrative divisions called Themata. The region of Macedonia Prima (the territory of modern Greek administrative district of Macedonia) was divided between the Thema of Thessalonica and the Thema of Strymon, so that only the region of the area from Nestos eastwards continued to carry the name Macedonia, referred to as the Thema of Macedonia or the Thema of "Macedonia in Thrace". The Thema of Macedonia in Thrace had its capital in Adrianople.

Familiarity with the Slavic element in the area led two brothers from Thessaloniki, Saints Cyril and Methodius, to be chosen to convert the Slavs to Christianity. Following the campaigns of Basil II, all of Macedonia returned to the Byzantine state. Following the Fourth Crusade 1203–1204, a short-lived Crusader realm, the Kingdom of Thessalonica, was established in the region. It was subdued by the co-founder of the Greek Despotate of Epirus, Theodore Komnenos Doukas in 1224, when Greek Macedonia and the city of Thessalonica were at the heart of the short-lived Empire of Thessalonica. Returning to the restored Byzantine Empire shortly thereafter, Greek Macedonia remained in Byzantine hands until the 1340s, when all of Macedonia (except Thessaloniki, and possibly Veria) was conquered by the Serbian ruler Stefan Dušan. Divided between Serbia and Bulgaria after Dušan's death, the region fell quickly to the advancing Ottomans, with Thessaloniki alone holding out until 1387. After a brief Byzantine interval in 1403–1430 (during the last seven years of which the city was handed over to the Venetians), Thessalonica and its immediate surrounding area returned to the Ottomans.

The capture of Thessalonica threw the Greek world into consternation, being regarded as the prelude to the fall of Constantinople itself. The memory of the event has survived through folk traditions containing fact and myths. Apostolos Vacalopoulos records the following Turkish tradition connected with the capture of Thessalonica:

Thessaloniki became a centre of Ottoman administration in the Balkans. While most of Macedonia was ruled by the Ottomans, in Mount Athos the monastic community continued to exist in a state of autonomy. The remainder of the Chalkidiki peninsula also enjoyed an autonomous status: the "Koinon of Mademochoria" was governed by a locally appointed council due to privileges obtained on account of its wealth, coming from the gold and silver mines in the area.

There were several uprisings in Macedonia during Ottoman rule, including an uprising after the Battle of Lepanto that ended in massacres of the Greek population, the uprising in Naousa of the armatolos Zisis Karademos in 1705, a rebellion in the area of Grevena by a Klepht called Ziakas (1730–1810) and the Greek Declaration of Independence in Macedonia by Emmanuel Pappas in 1821, during the Greek War of Independence. In 1854 Theodoros Ziakas, the son of the klepht Ziakas, together with Tsamis Karatasos, who had been among the captains at the siege of Naousa in 1821, led another uprising in Western Macedonia that has been profusely commemorated in Greek folk song.

Greece gained the southern parts of the region with Thessaloniki from the Ottoman Empire after the First Balkan War, and expanded its share in the Second Balkan War against Bulgaria. The boundaries of Greek Macedonia were finalized in the Treaty of Bucharest. In World War I, Macedonia became a battlefield. The Greek Prime Minister, Eleftherios Venizelos, favoured entering the war on the side of the Entente, while the Germanophile King Constantine I favoured neutrality. Invited by Venizelos, in autumn 1915, the Allies landed forces in Thessaloniki to aid Serbia in its war against Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria, but their intervention came too late to prevent the Serbian collapse. The Macedonian Front was established, with Thessaloniki at its heart, while in summer 1916 the Bulgarians took over Greek eastern Macedonia without opposition. This provoked a military uprising among pro-Venizelist officers in Thessaloniki, resulting in the establishment of a "Provisional Government of National Defence" in the city, headed by Venizelos, which entered the war alongside the Allies. After intense diplomatic negotiations and an armed confrontation in Athens between Entente and royalist forces the King abdicated, and his second son Alexander took his place. Venizelos returned to Athens in June 1917 and Greece, now unified, officially joined the war on the side of the Allies.

In World War II Macedonia was occupied by the Axis (1941–44), with Germany taking western and central Macedonia with Thessaloniki and Bulgaria occupying and annexing eastern Macedonia.

From the 1870s, Slavic speaking communities of northern Greece split into two hostile and opposed groups with two different national identities - Greek and Bulgarian. By the Second World War and following the defeat of Bulgaria, another further split between the Slavic group occurred. Conservatives departed with the occupying Bulgarian Army to Bulgaria. Leftists began identifying as Macedonians (Slavic), joining the communist-dominated rebel Democratic Army of Greece. At the conclusion of the Greek Civil War (1946–49), most Macedonians of Slavic background left Greece and settled in the Yugoslav Socialist Republic of Macedonia. Some also migrated to Canada or Australia.

The name "Macedonia" derives from the Greek Μακεδονία ("Makedonía"), a kingdom (later, region) named after the ancient Macedonians. Their name, Μακεδόνες ("Makedónes"), is cognate to the Ancient Greek adjective μακεδνός ("makednós"), meaning "tall, slim". It was traditionally derived from the Indo-European root "*mak-", meaning 'long' or'slender'. Linguist Robert S. P. Beekes supports the idea that both terms are of Pre-Greek substrate origin and cannot be explained in terms of Indo-European morphology. However, Beekes' views are not mainstream.

Macedonia is divided into three regions () comprising fourteen regional units (). The regional units are further divided into municipalities (Greek: δήμοι) or "communities" (Greek: κοινότητες – roughly equivalent to British or Australian shires). They are overseen by the Ministry for the Interior, while the Ministry of Macedonia and Thrace is responsible for the coordination and application of the government's policies in the region. Prior to the Kallikratis Reform in 2010, Greece's regional units were called "prefectures", and Thasos was part of the prefecture of Kavala.

Macedonia borders the neighboring regions of Thessaly to the south, Thrace (part of the East Macedonia and Thrace region) to the east and Epirus to the west. It also borders Albania to the north-west, the Republic of Macedonia to the north and Bulgaria to the north-east. The three Macedonian regions and their subdivisions are:

The geographical region of Macedonia also includes the male-only autonomous monastic state of Mount Athos, but this is not part of the Macedonia precincts. Mount Athos is under the spiritual jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, and enjoys a special status: it is inaccessible to women; its territory is a self-governed part of Greece, and the powers of the state are exercised through a governor. The European Union takes this special status into consideration, particularly on matters of taxation exemption and rights of installation. The governor of Mount Athos is appointed by the Greek Foreign Ministry.

Macedonia possesses some of the richest farmland in Greece in the plains of Veria, Thessaloniki, Serres and Drama. A wide variety of agricultural products and cash crops are grown, including rice, wheat, beans, olives, cotton, tobacco, fruit, grapes, Florina peppers; there is also production of wine and other alcoholic beverages. Food processing and textile weaving constitute the principal manufacturing industries. Tourism is a major industry along the coast, particularly in the Chalcidice peninsula, the island of Thasos and the northern approaches to Mount Olympus. Many tourists originate from Germany and Eastern Europe.
Thessaloniki is a major port city and industrial center; Kavala is the second harbor of Macedonia. Apart from the principal airport at Thessaloniki (Makedonia Airport), airports also exist in Kavala (M.Alexandros Airport), Kozani (Filippos Airport), and Kastoria (Aristotelis Airport). The "Via Egnatia" motorway crosses the full distance of Macedonia, linking most of its main cities. It also has a train system; it is usually criticized for being underfunded, and there has been much anger directed against OSE, the national railway company.

Central Macedonia is the most popular tourist destination in Greece with more than 3.6 million tourists in 2009 (18% of the total number of tourists who visited Greece that year.)

Popular tourist destinations include the various UNESCO World Heritage sites, the various beaches (such as the peninsula of Chalkidiki) during the summer and ski resorts like Vasilitsa. There is also significant religious tourism to Mount Athos.

Macedonian cuisine is the cuisine of the region of Macedonia in northern Greece. Contemporary Greek Macedonian cooking shares much with general Greek and wider Balkan and Mediterranean cuisine, including dishes from the Ottoman past. Specific influences include dishes of the Pontic, Aromanian, Armenian and Sephardi Jewish population. The mix of the different people inhabiting the region gave the name to the "Macedonian salad".

Music of Macedonia is the music of the geographic region of Macedonia in Greece, which is a part of the music of whole region of Macedonia. Notable element of the local folk music is the use of trumpets and koudounia (called "chálkina" in local idioma).

The inhabitants of Greek Macedonia are overwhelmingly ethnic Greeks and most are Greek Orthodox Christians. In East Macedonia and Thrace there is also a sizable Muslim minority consisting mainly of Pomaks and Western Thrace Turks, although almost all Greek Muslim communities of Western Macedonia such as the Vallahades left the region as part of the Population exchange between Greece and Turkey of 1922–23. Most Pontic Greeks and Caucasus Greeks who came to Greece during or shortly before the 1922–23 population exchange with Turkey were resettled in Greek Macedonia rather than other parts Greece, mainly in towns and villages that had had large Muslim populations until 1922. From the Middle Ages to the early 20th century, the ethnic composition of the region of Macedonia is characterized by uncertainty both about numbers and identification. The 1904 Ottoman census of Hilmi Pasha people were assigned to ethnicity according which church/language they belonged, it recorded 373,227 Greeks in the vilayet of Selânik (Thessaloniki), 261,283 Greeks in the vilayet of Monastir (Bitola) and 13,452 Greeks in the villayet of Kosovo. For the 1904 census of the 648,962 Greeks by church, 307,000 identified as Greek speakers, while about 250,000 as Slavic speakers and 99,000 as Vlach. Hugh Poulton, in his "Who Are the Macedonians", notes that "assessing population figures is problematic" for the territory of Greek Macedonia before its incorporation into the Greek state in 1913. The area's remaining population was principally composed of Ottoman Turks (including non-Turkish Muslims of mainly Bulgarian and Greek Macedonian convert origin) and also a sizeable community of mainly Sephardic Jews (centred in Thessaloniki), and smaller numbers of Romani, Albanians and Vlachs.

During the first half of the twentieth century, major demographic shifts took place, which resulted in the region's population becoming overwhelmingly ethnic Greek. In 1919, after Greek victory in World War I, Bulgaria and Greece signed the Treaty of Neuilly, which called for an exchange of populations between the two countries. According to the treaty, Bulgaria was considered to be the parent state of all ethnic Slavs living in Greece. Most ethnic Greeks from Bulgaria were resettled in Greek Macedonia; most Slavs were resettled in Bulgaria but a number remained, most of them by changing or adapting their surnames and declaring themselves to be Greek so as to be exempt from the exchange. In 1923 Greece and Turkey signed the Treaty of Lausanne in the aftermath of the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922), and in total 776,000 Greek refugees from Turkey (674,000), Bulgaria (33,000), Russia (61,000), Serbia (5,000), Albania (3,000) were resettled in the region. They replaced between 300,000 and 400,000 Macedonian Turks and other Muslims (of Albanian, Roma, Slavic and Vlach ethnicity) who were sent to Turkey under similar terms.

Macedonian cities during Ottoman rule were often known by multiple names (Greek, Slavic, or Ottoman Turkish by the respective populations). After the partition of Ottoman Europe, most cities in Greece either became officially known by their Greek names or adopted Greek names; likewise most cities in Bulgaria and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia became officially known or adopted names in the languages of their respective states. After the population exchanges, many locations were renamed to the languages of their new occupants.

After the Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine ten thousands of Bulgarians left and after the population exchange between Greece and Turkey almost all Muslims left the region, while hundreds of thousands of Greek refugees settled in the region thus changing the demography of the province.

The 1928 Greek Census collected data on the religion as well as on the language.

The population was badly affected by the Second World War through starvation, executions, massacres and deportations. Central Macedonia, including Thessaloniki, was occupied by the Germans, and in the east Nazi-aligned Bulgarian occupation forces persecuted the local Greek population and settled Bulgarian colonists in their occupation zone in eastern Macedonia and western Thrace, deporting all Jews from the region. Total civilian deaths in Macedonia are estimated at over 400,000, including up to 55,000 Greek Jews. Further heavy fighting affected the region during the Greek Civil War which drove many inhabitants of rural Macedonia to emigrate to the towns and cities, or abroad, during the late 1940s and 1950s.

An article published in an Athenian newspaper from 1959 tells a detailed story of the ceremony which took place in the village of Atrapos, when the villagers - mostly women and children - took "the oath before God" to cease speaking the local Slavic idiom, which gives ground for misunderstandings to the Bulgarians.

Greek is by far the most widely spoken and the only official language of public life and education in Macedonia. The local Macedonian dialect is spoken alongside dialects from other parts of Greece and Pontic Greek still spoken by some Greeks of Pontic descent. One archaic Greek dialect indigenous to Greek Macedonia and other parts of Northern Greece is that spoken by the Sarakatsani, a traditionally transhument shepherd community whose dialect has undergone very little change through foreign influences. Macedonian Slavic dialects are the most widely spoken minority language while Aromanian, Arvanitic, Megleno-Romanian, Turkish and Romani are also spoken. Ladino is still spoken by some Jews in Thessaloniki.

Macedonians () is the term by which ethnic Greeks originating from the region are known. Macedonians came to be of particular importance during the Balkan Wars when they were a minority population inside the Ottoman province of Macedonia. The Macedonians now have a strong regional identity, manifested both in Greece and by emigrant groups in the Greek diaspora. This sense of identity has been highlighted in the context of the Macedonian naming dispute after the break-up of Yugoslavia, in which Greece objected to its northern neighbour calling itself the "Republic of Macedonia", since explicit self-identification as "Macedonian" is a matter of heritage for northern Greeks. A characteristic expression of this attitude could be seen when Greek newspapers headlined a declaration by Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis at a meeting of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg in January 2007, saying that ""I myself am a Macedonian, and another two and a half million Greeks are Macedonians."

The distinct regional identity of Greek Macedonians is also the product of the fact that it was closer to the centres of power in both the Byzantine and Ottoman period, was considered culturally, politically, and strategically more important than other parts of Greece during these two periods, and also the fact that the region had a far more ethnically and religiously diverse population in both the medieval and Ottoman periods. In the late Byzantine period Greek Macedonia had also been the centre of significant Byzantine successor states, such as the Kingdom of Thessalonica, the short-lived state established by the rival Byzantine emperor, Theodore Komnenos Doukas, and - in parts of western Macedonia - the Despotate of Epirus, all of which helped promote a distinct Greek Macedonian identity.

In the contemporary period this is reinforced by Greek Macedonia's proximity to other states in the southern Balkans, the continuing existence of ethnic and religious minorities in East Macedonia and Thrace not found in southern Greece, and the fact that migrants and refugees from elsewhere in the Balkans, southern Russia, and Georgia (including Pontic Greeks and Caucasus Greeks from northeastern Anatolia and the south Caucasus) have usually gravitated to Greek Macedonia rather than southern Greece.

The exact size of the linguistic and ethnic minority groups of Macedonia is officially unknown, as Greece has not conducted a census on the question of mother tongue since 1951. The main minority groups in Macedonia are:

Slavic-speakers are concentrated in the Florina, Kastoria, Edessa, Giannitsa, Ptolemaida and Naousa regions. Their dialects are linguistically classified variously either as Macedonian or Bulgarian, depending on the region and on political orientation. The exact number of the minority is difficult to know, and its members' choice of ethnic identification is difficult to ascertain (since some people are cautious in the replies that they give when surveys are conducted). The Greek branch of the former International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights has estimated that those of an ethnic Macedonian national consciousness number between 10,000–30,000.

Aromanians form a minority population throughout much of Macedonia. They largely identify as Greeks and most belong to the Greek Orthodox Church. In the 1951 census they numbered 39,855 in all Greece (the number in Macedonia proper is unknown). Many Aromanians villages can be found along the slopes of the Vermion Mountains and Mount Olympus. Smaller numbers can be found in the Prespes region and near the Gramos mountains.

Megleno-Romanians can be found in the Moglena region of Macedonia. The Megleno-Romanian language is traditionally spoken in the 11 Vlach villages, Archangelos, Notia, Karpi, Koupa, Lagkadia, Perikleia, Skra and Kastaneri (the other three are found in the Republic of Macedonia). They are generally adherents to the Orthodox Church while the former majority in Notia was Muslim.

Arvanites communities can be found in Greek Macedonia. Five Arvanite communities exist in Serres regional unit while many can be found in the capital, Thessaloniki. There are three Arvanites villages in the Florina regional unit (Drosopigi, Lechovo and Flampouro) with others located in Kilkis and Thessaloniki regional units.

The Jewish population in Greece was the oldest in mainland Europe, and was mostly Sephardic. Thessaloniki became the largest center of the Sephardic Jews, who nicknamed the city "la madre de Israel" (Israel's mother) and "Jerusalem of the Balkans". It also included the historically significant and ancient Greek-speaking Romaniote community. During the Ottoman era, Thessaloniki's Sephardic community comprised more than half the city's population; the Jews were dominant in commerce until the ethnic Greek population increased after independence in 1912. By the 1680s, about 300 families of Sephardic Jews, followers of Sabbatai Zevi, had converted to Islam, becoming a sect known as the "Dönmeh" (convert), and migrated to Salonika, whose population was majority Jewish. They established an active community that thrived for about 250 years. Many of their descendants later became prominent in trade. Many Jewish inhabitants of Thessaloniki spoke Ladino, the Romance language of the Sephardic Jews.

The Great Thessaloniki Fire of 1917 burned much of the center of the city and left 50,000 Jews homeless of the total of 72,000 residents who were burned out. Having lost homes and their businesses, many Jews emigrated: to the United States, Palestine, and Paris. They could not wait for the government to create a new urban plan for rebuilding, which was eventually done.

After the Greco-Turkish War in 1922 and the expulsion of Greeks from Turkey, many refugees came to Greece. Nearly 100,000 ethnic Greeks resettled in Thessaloniki, reducing the proportion of Jews in the total community. After this, Jews made up about 20% of the city's population. During the interwar period, Greece granted the Jews the same civil rights as other Greek citizens. In March 1926, Greece re-emphasized that all citizens of Greece enjoyed equal rights, and a considerable proportion of the city's Jews decided to stay.

World War II brought a disaster for the Jewish Greeks, since in 1941 the Germans occupied Greece and began actions against the Jewish population. Greeks of the Resistance and Italian forces (before 1943) tried to protect the Jews and managed to save some. By the 1940s, the great majority of the Jewish Greek community firmly identified as both Greek and Jewish. According to Misha Glenny, such Greek Jews had largely not encountered "anti-Semitism as in its North European form."

In 1943 the Nazis began actions against the Jews in Thessaloniki, forcing them into a ghetto near the railroad lines and beginning deportation to concentration and labor camps. They deported and exterminated approximately 96% of Thessaloniki's Jews of all ages during the Holocaust. Today, a community of around 1200 remains in the city. Communities of descendants of Thessaloniki Jews – both Sephardic and Romaniote – live in other areas, mainly the United States and Israel. Israeli singer Yehuda Poliker recorded a song about the Jews of Thessaloniki, called "Wait for me, Thessaloniki".

Other cities of Greek Macedonia with significant Jewish population (Romaniote or Sephardi) in the past include Veria, Kavala and Kastoria.

Other minority groups include Armenians and Romani. Romani communities are concentrated mainly around the city of Thessaloniki. An uncertain number of them live in Macedonia from the total of about 200,000–300,000 that live scattered on all the regions of Greece.