Denby Fawcett: YWCA Members Fight To Retain Fitness Program Before It Closes This Week

The Young Women Christian Association of Oahu will terminate its century-old Health and Wellness Program at the downtown Laniakea YWCA on Friday — ending all fitness classes and membersʻ use of the lockers, gym and swimming pool.

Some Health and Wellness members have been coming to the YWCA on Richards Street since they were children. The pool is where they learned how to swim as kids, the courtyard was where they picked up social skills at dances when they were teens.

Now, some of them are elderly like Gainor Tomokiyo, who takes the bus every morning from her Kaimuki home to the Richards Street facility to swim laps in the heated pool. They were stunned when they discovered in January that the YWCA had decided to shut down the Health and Wellness Program apparently without management seeking input from the membership about the potential end to the program.

“They sprung it on us. Even though they said they had been discussing closing the program for years, it was the first we heard about it. It was a done deal. Bye, bye, thatʻs it,” said Christina Meller.

Meller, 73, has been a member of the YWCA since she was a student at Farrington High School, active in the YWCAʻs Y-Teens program. She is a retired state planner who has served on a YWCA Laniakea board and worked as an instructor of hula, aquatics and other fitness classes at the facility.

“I wish they had been more open. When you do things behind closed doors, it only leads to animosity,” Meller said.

Tomokiyo , a retiree who has been coming to the facility since she was 7 years old, said the facility is a community — very much a part of the members’ lives as they gather at to the pool not only to swim but to socialize and make new friends.

YWCA CEO Noriko Namiki said in an email to Civil Beat that discussions on the future of the Health and Wellness Program started in the spring of 2021 as part of strategic planning to review all the YWCA programs.

She said even though the board was involved in the discussions she made the decision to shut down the program. It was an operational issue not voted on by the board, and it was not for members to help decide.

“The YWCA Association Members (and Health & Wellness/H&W members) do not dictate our operational decisions,” she wrote.

After members found out about the closure, they banded together to create a website called “Save Health and Fitness at the Y.” They made up a petition signed by 270 supporters and sent letters to the governor and spoke to him in person, emailed lawmakers, YWCA directors and other community leaders.

But they say nothing has worked. They say the Y could have harnessed the membersʻ anger and turned it into positive energy to help management retain the program but instead YWCA officials seemed to take the criticism personally and lash out against the most vocal members.

On May 10, Namiki sent letters of expulsion to two women leaders of the drive to keep the program alive. Constance Wickware and Janis Fenton were told their memberships were revoked, effective immediately.

Wickware, 70, is a retired Hawaii public school teacher active in the YWCAʻs swimming program for five years with a membership paid for by her health insurer.

She had sent a letter to Gov. Josh Green asking him to help save the program. She had also written to Namiki to complain about the way members were treated in announcing the end of the fitness program.

Fenton, 75, is a retired paralegal who has been swimming at the Y as a member for more than 20 years. The YWCA terminated her membership after she made requests to see the organization bylaws and other documents such as meeting minutes.

In a three-page letter, Namiki criticized Fentonʻs behavior saying she had violated the YWCA Oahuʻs code of conduct. Namiki was particularly critical of a newspaper article Fenton had written offering reasons why the Health and Wellness Program could be saved. Namiki said it had false statements.

In addition to receiving a letter of expulsion, Fenton says she was confronted by YWCA Chief Operating Officer Terri Funakoshi and facilities manager Eric Walden when she was at the swimming pool with her friends. The two officials told her to leave the premises immediately.

Fenton said was embarrassed by the experience but refused to go. She told them that by the state law governing nonprofits the YWCA could not expel her without at least 15 days advanced notice and a chance to be heard. Funakoshi and Walden backed off.

In her email, Namiki did not answer why Fenton and Wickware were not offered a chance to defend their right to membership as required by law or why her staff tried to kick Fenton out of the pool.

Former Senior Hawaii Deputy Attorney General Hugh Jones says the YWCAʻs apparent lack of transparency to members about the programʻs closure is troubling, especially when it looks like thereʻs been retaliation against members who have asked for the organizationʻs records as allowed by state law but have been denied the opportunity.

Jones, now in private practice, was the supervisor of the Tax and Charity Division of the Attorney Generalʻs office for more than a decade until 2018 and is a visiting law professor at the University of Hawaii, teaching the law on nonprofits.

Jones also said it is a violation of Hawaiiʻs nonprofit law to expel or suspend a member of a nonprofit corporation without certain due process procedures.

“Nonprofits with voting members like the YWCA are supposed to be run like mini-democracies, not dictatorships,” says Jones.

Namiki has refused to honor three of Fentonʻs written requests to review documents such as the minutes of YWCA Oahu board and committee meetings for the last three years — records she is entitled by Hawaiiʻs nonprofit law to see.

Fenton says reviewing the record of meetings could help members better understand and possibly offer the board ideas of how to resolve the issues that led to the decision to close the program. More information could also shed light on what efforts had been made to retain the program.

Namiki says she has offered Fenton and others the opportunity to submit a proposal to keep the wellness program open which they failed to submit but the members who heard her offer say she has been unwilling to give them data needed to make a viable proposal.

By reviewing the organizationʻs Articles of Incorporation on the state consumer protection website, it is evident YWCA of Oahu’s leadership has been trying at least since 2018 to diminish the membersʻ rights to influence important decisions.

According to the organizationʻs bylaws last amended in 2015, any YWCA Oahu member who is 15 years or older has explicitly stated rights including the right to attend yet not vote at all meetings, and the right to nominate candidates for the Board of Directors of the association and to vote for directors and the officers of the association except for the CEO.

But on Dec. 13, 2018, board members approved amendments to the organization’s Articles of Incorporation to take away almost all of membersʻ voting rights. The amended document reads: “The Members shall not have voting rights and shall not be entitled to vote on, consent to, approve or authorize any actions by the Corporation, except that Members shall have the right to vote on and approve the following actions: (i) the dissolution of the Corporation, (ii) a sale of all, or substantially all, of the Corporation’s assets and (ili) any merger to which the Corporation is-a party.”

Jones, who has reviewed corporate filings with the state regarding the YWCAʻs vote in 2018 to amend its Articles of Incorporation, believes the board’s decision may not have been proper.

“There are indications in the organization’s annual corporate filing with the state in 2018 that it failed to have the 15 directors required by its governing documents and it may have lacked quorum (six members) to approve the 2018 amendments to its governing documents.” he wrote to Civil Beat.

As of this year, the corporate filings still show that the YWCA has less than the 15 directors required in its governing documents.

Jones added, “The board has a duty of care to ensure it is compliant with its articles and bylaws and the apparent lack of a board quorum calls into question the validity of prior board decisions.”

Civil Beat’s repeated requests to interview YWCA Board Chair Susan L. Ing to talk about these issues were denied by Namiki who says she is the spokesperson for the organization.

Ing did not immediately respond to emails to discuss the closure or the apparent violation of state law in member evictions and withholding of records.

Namiki has explained her reasons for the closure in news interviews, a letter sent March 20 to members and in an article she wrote in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.

She said in the letter to the members it not financially feasible for the YWCA to maintain the health and wellness activities at Laniakea due to dwindling membership and the expense of maintaining the pool and exercise facility in an aging historic building.

In media interviews, she has said Health and Wellness membership was dropping even before the pandemic, steadily decreasing from 1,000 members to a current membership of about 250.

But she she has not offered details about what actions the organization has taken to attract new members and retain old members or which fitness professionals it spoke with to for ideas to make the program thrive.

She says the decision to close the Health and Wellness Program was made in consideration of the YWCA’s long-term goals for the future. “Our view is not what we can maintain over the next five to 10 years. We are looking at how YWCA Oahu shows up to the community over a much longer time frame,” she said.

Namiki said the cost of running the Health and Wellness Program had the potential to impact the growth of the YWCA’s key initiatives, including the Patsy T. Mink Center for Business and Leadership, Dress for Success, the Bella Project and the Enterprising Women of Color Business Center.

The pool will remain open, available to groups or individuals who want to rent it.

There are other fitness programs nearby in downtown Honolulu where YWCA members can enroll such as the Nuuanu YMCA but members say none of them can match the singular beauty of the Laniakea pool and building designed in 1926 by Julia Morgan, the famous architect who created William Randolph Hearstʻs castle in San Simeon, California.

A book about Morgan calls Honoluluʻs YWCA “one of her most enchanting and seductive public buildings.”

YWCA Oahu over the years has gradually changed from a member-driven organization dedicated to the betterment of all women and children on Oahu with fitness classes and programs for mental enrichment to a social service agency dedicated to entrepreneurship and small business support and outreach to victims of domestic violence and women inmates transitioning from prison.

It is funded by rental income from establishments in the Laniakea building as well as income from weddings and corporate meetings on the premises, a thrift shop and donations from individuals and companies and government grants.

Its programs are worthy and have helped hundreds of women — some of them facing serious challenges — advance in their working lives.

But physical fitness, health and social well-being of its members has also been a mainstay of the YWCA for more than 100 years. It is a shame this had to end in such a mean-spirited way with so little input from members who spoke so passionately about its deep meaning to them.

“The program is such a valuable resource. It needs to be retained and cherished,” Meller said.