Families benefit from Naples YMCA’s open doors

Author: Nicole Papageorge
Published: Updated:

COLLIER COUNTY, Fla.- Kids may be on Christmas break this week, but many parents certainly aren’t.

The Greater Naples YMCA is stepping up to provide a safe, educational environment while parents go to work.

Many of the families at the Y receive help from funds earned during the Naples Winter Wine Festival.

“We’re very lucky that a place like this, helps a family like mine,” said Natalia Rey.

Rey is a single mother of two boys. She, like many parents, had to go to work Tuesday although her kids are home from school.

That’s why the Greater Naples YMCA stepped in, keeping its doors open during a time when many childcare centers across Southwest Florida do not.

Throughout the year the YMCA’s childcare program teaches 220 kids. More than 100 of them are able to attend thanks to $400,000 worth of scholarships from the Naples Children and Education Foundation.

“The Naples Children Education Fund .. which is supported through the Winter Wine Festival, funds this facility .. this activity all year round,” said festival co-chair Chuck Hallberg. “We have the wine festival and it’s great that we get to enjoy great dinners, great wine, exciting auction lots… but at the end of the day, it provides us an avenue to fund such important things in the community as this daycare center.”

A daycare center that offers so much help and hope for families like Rey’s.

“I feel so lucky because I’m a single mother of two boys and it’s the only way I’m able to go to work and feel comfortable that they’re in a happy, safe place,” said Rey.

Since 2001, the Winter Wine Festival has raised more than $123 million for underprivileged and at-risk children.

Copyright ©2024 Fort Myers Broadcasting. All rights reserved.

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without prior written consent.