Yes We Can Achievement & Cultural Center

Years ago, while teaching in the Chester Upland School District, Twyla Simpkins noticed that her students - many facing difficult circumstances at home - struggled to understand the value of learning. That realization sparked a powerful classroom conversation: How did Chester become what it is today?

What began as a discussion turned into a mission. Twyla began sharing her Chester history collection, building a resource that would inspire not only her students but the broader community. That passion for preserving the city’s past—and creating a space where residents can connect, reflect, and write new stories—became part of the foundation of the former YWCA Chester, now known as the YES Center.

Over the years, Twyla has accumulated a large collection of historical artifacts about Chester. She has been traveling with that collection to various locations for educational presentations around the region as one of the YES Center’s pillar programs. The collection is wide-ranging and ever-growing. While there are other local organizations that preserve the history of Delaware County, Twyla recognized a need for representation of Chester’s deep and diverse history.  

Greenlawn Cemetery is one of those pieces of diverse history that was almost lost. The YES Center shares the history of one of the most famous Black cemeteries in the region, and helps people reconnect to where their loved ones are buried after paperwork was lost years ago.

In addition, the YES Center runs a community quilting project, organizes an annual MLK Day celebration in Chester, and facilitates a “woman changemaker” series, which is a gathering of women telling stories in their own voices of their lived experiences. In March, the series inducts some of the community’s most important change-makers, including State Representative Carol Kazeem, Doctor Kristin Motley, and most recently, centurian Florence Thompson.

The Yes We Can Achievement & Cultural Center, located on 7th and Sproul Streets in Chester, is a unique and beautiful historic space that used to host day camps and offer a variety of community services. It features a well-used gym and a pool, but in 2014, a series of incidents, including flooding, roof damage, vandalism, and theft, forced the Center to close its brick-and-mortar location until further repairs could be made.  

Due to the state of the building, there is no programming currently taking place in the physical location of the YES Center. However, the YES Center operates through traveling programs which present the historical collection to regional groups, in partnership with many community organizations, and other programming lives on through borrowed spaces and creative planning.  

The YES Center is currently fundraising to restore the building so that it can again become the physical hub to the community, which it has been in the past. When it reopens, it will serve as a gym, community center, library, museum, as well as a Black repository, enabling it to continue telling the story of Chester’s deep history.