The East Boston YMCA teaches children, teens, adults, and parents with their kids to swim. It runs classes in Spanish on Wednesdays, afterschool programs, adult education, financial assistance for families who need it, and more. For part of the community it was built for, some of that is still not widely known.
A special section puts all of it in front of the people it was meant for. Nobody chooses a service that has never been explained to them, and print gives that explanation room: more context, in the reader's language, in a form that stays in the house. El Planeta's print edition reaches an older, settled, Spanish-dominant readership: the parents and grandparents who decide what their family joins, signs up for, and spends on.
It also arrives carrying something a placement cannot buy on its own. Our readers have trusted El Planeta as their newspaper for more than two decades, and that trust extends to the partners who appear in our pages. Through Hispanic Heritage Month, when Latino audiences are watching closely to see which institutions speak to them directly in Spanish, the YMCA reads as a neighbor being introduced rather than as an advertiser.
The pillars below are for reference, drawn from what we talked through on our call. Final topics are chosen together with your team. From there, El Planeta builds each page from the information, materials, and images you share with us, with the option of short phone interviews with YMCA staff.
A plain comparison of what is included at the YMCA against a commercial gym: classes, pool, family access, and financial assistance. Written for a reader comparing monthly costs at the kitchen table.
Children's lessons, teen swim, adult swim, and parent-child swim. Including the reason parents hesitate: adults who never learned to swim are afraid to let their kids near the pool. The YMCA teaches them too.
Afterschool programs, youth sports, adult education, and the Wednesday classes offered in Spanish. The parts of the YMCA that most readers do not associate with the YMCA at all.
Address, hours, who to ask for, how to register, how to apply for a scholarship, and which staff speak Spanish. The page a family tears out and keeps.