Ymca Program Organizer Does A Little Of Everything

Taking responsibility for 24 YMCA staffers and 300 children is not for the faint of heart.

In five years with the Valley Y, Kuray Arland has learned and learned - everything from what to do with a knocked-out tooth, to the hard fact that in an operation the size of the Y’s youth programs, you can listen to people’s problems, but you just can’t make everyone happy.

“I try to help everyone. But sometimes you just can’t,” Arland said.

Arland, 28, is in charge of the Y’s before- and after-school programs, as well as the organization’s vacation camps.

She’s the voice on the phone talking parents through problems their child may have had before or after school.

She’s the organizer who ferries supplies to 19 schools around the Valley, makes sure all her staff has the proper training in CPR, first-aid, food handling, and handles the paperwork for state-required licensing for each youth program.

She’s also the pinch-hitter who fills in once in a while, working with the children. “Especially mornings,” she said. The Y’s morning programs start as early as 6 a.m.

Through it all, she remembers the children she worked with herself in her first few years with the Y. There’s the girl whom Arland worked with one summer in the Y’s Adventure Day Camp, who then called the next spring wondering if Arland was going to work with the program again.

“If I was, she was going to sign up,” Arland said.

And there’s the time a girl was hurt playing on the jungle gym at Valley Mission Park. Arland was pleased with the way her staff handled the incident. The child knocked out a tooth. A quick call to the dentist - who said the tooth should either be placed in milk or under the child’s tongue - helped make it possible to save the tooth.

Not only that, but Arland made sure flowers were sent the next day.

Such are the small touches that have helped the Y’s youth program flourish.

With plans developing for the Valley Y to build its own facility, Arland is looking at more change, and more lessons, no doubt.

She glanced up at the cramped Y office inside Tidyman’s Warehouse Foods at Sprague and McDonald and said, “We’ve always said we’ll be lonely when we get our own offices.”

Arland grew up in the Valley, as did her mother and her grandmother. She remembers playing in the hills above Ponderosa and enjoying the wheat fields, now covered with houses.

On Monday, Arland and her husband, Mark, will have their second anniversary. In addition to celebrating with a weekend in Sandpoint, Arland is giving herself a little treat: “I’m going to take the day off,” she said.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo

MEMO: Saturday’s People is a regular Valley Voice feature profiling remarkable individuals in the Valley. If you know someone who would be a good profile subject, please call editor Mike Schmeltzer at 927-2170.