The YMCA was founded in London
On this day · 6 June 1844
A 22-year-old draper gathered eleven friends in a London shop and sparked one of the world's largest youth movements.
On 6 June 1844, a 22-year-old draper named George Williams met with eleven friends in London to form the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). Industrial London had drawn thousands of young workers into crowded cities, where long hours and few wholesome alternatives left them vulnerable to the hazards of the streets.
Williams and his fellow drapers wanted somewhere to study the Bible, pray, and find fellowship away from taverns and squalor. Their idea grew out of informal prayer meetings among shop workers, and the founding gathering set out to improve the spiritual condition of young men engaged in the drapery and other trades.
A handful of shop assistants built a refuge that would circle the globe.
The movement spread with remarkable speed. Within a few years YMCAs appeared across Britain and beyond, and today the organisation operates in well over 100 countries. Williams was later knighted by Queen Victoria and, on his death in 1905, was honoured with burial in St Paul’s Cathedral.
Sources & references
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