Belonging
A welcoming place where people know one another, young people find guidance, and generations share the same rooms.
01 / The vision
Restore the place · renew the promise
A home for Chester to learn, remember, gather—and build what comes next.
The YES Center’s vision begins with a historic building, but it reaches far beyond brick and stone: a permanent place where women, families, young people, elders, artists, historians, and neighbors can belong.
Former Chester YWCA · 4 East 7th Street · CC0 building photograph
02 / The mission
A foundation worth making permanent
Empower people.
Strengthen community.
“Dedicated to the elimination of racism, empowering women and promoting peace, justice, freedom and dignity for all.”
The public YES Center mission is lived through information, education, cultural awareness, creative arts, support networks, mentoring, personal development, and heritage work. Restoring the former YWCA would give that work a visible, lasting home.
Read the current public About page03 / What the vision protects
Four commitments, held together
The building matters because of what can happen inside it.
Opportunity
Learning, mentoring, creative practice, recreation, technology, and pathways for people to grow into leadership.
Memory
A Chester Museum, library, research center, and Black repository that keep the city’s records and lived stories close to home.
Stewardship
A restored landmark cared for as a long-term community institution—not simply preserved, but made useful again.
04 / The place
An anchor, reactivated
Bring the warmth back into the rooms.
In Coming to Herself, Chester residents remember the former YWCA as a family environment—a place for meetings, after-school programs, summer camps, swimming, leadership, and the everyday comfort of being known.
The restoration vision carries that feeling forward. It imagines a building active across the day and across generations: children learning, adults building skills, elders moving and gathering, artists making, historians preserving, and neighbors organizing.
Watch the documentary05 / What could live here
Future uses named across the source material
A whole center—not a single program.
These are vision goals gathered from Twyla’s project direction, the public YES Center site, and the documentary. They are not presented as currently open facilities, final floor plans, or a construction commitment.
Explore the restorationHeritage Place
A Chester Museum, library, research center, and Black repository for local records, objects, images, oral histories, and family collections.
Learning & technology
Rooms for tutoring, mentoring, workshops, a computer lab, internet access, and learning across ages.
Movement & recreation
A renewed pool, fitness and aquatics opportunities, a gym, youth recreation, and active aging.
Making & culture
Sewing, fashion and costuming, heirloom crafts, exhibitions, film, performance, and creative exchange.
Gathering & enterprise
Flexible meeting and event space, an internet café, a tea room, and room for ideas and small ventures to grow.
06 / Chester’s memory
Keep it here · invite more in
A city’s history becomes more powerful when the city can use it.
Twyla’s traveling Black history collection offers a foundation. The documentary adds another powerful possibility: Chester families entrusting photographs, newspapers, records, and trunks of material to be cataloged for the future.
Inside the restored center, the museum can be a public doorway into that history—through exhibitions, research access, school visits, oral-history work, and community-contributed collections.
Explore the Chester Museum vision
07 / Stewardship
Twyla “Ms. T” Simpkins
A vision rooted in Chester pride.
Twyla is a retired Chester educator, community activist, collector, and historian. Her work joins education with cultural preservation: keeping the building from disappearing, carrying programs into the community, and assembling a collection that can help Chester see itself more fully.
The next chapter turns that persistence into shared stewardship—with residents, descendants, educators, artists, institutions, volunteers, funders, and the Chester diaspora helping the YES Center become durable.
Connect with the YES Center09 / Take part
The future is a shared project
Help bring the YES Center back to life.
Chester’s residents, families, institutions, and diaspora all have something to contribute: time, expertise, records, relationships, resources, and belief in the place.
Ways to take part