About Youth Service America

YSA Staff

Meet the extraordinary Youth Service America team.

YSA Board

Meet Youth Service America’s amazing Board of Directors.

YSA Sponsors

Meet the sponsors who support Youth Service America.

YSA Reports

View Youth Service America’s impact and financial reports.

YSA’s VISION & MISSION

Youth Service America believes that youth, communities, and our democracy thrive when we all work together for the common good. YSA is a leading global nonprofit that activates young people, ages 5-25, to find their voice, take action, and acquire powerful civic and 21st Century skills as they solve problems facing their communities. YSA supports its activation campaigns with grants, training and resources, and recognition programs for young people and their adult champions. Youth-led projects use Awareness, Service, Advocacy, and Philanthropy (ASAP) strategies to create social and environmental change.

  • Young people thrive when they are able to use their Sparks (passions, interests, and skills) to help others while building 21st Century Skills (Critical Thinking; Creativity, Collaboration, Communication) necessary for success in school, work, and life.
  • Communities thrive when youth “Lead ASAP” through Awareness, Service, Advocacy, and Philanthropy to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and meet critical health, education, human service, human rights, and environmental needs.
  • Our democracy thrives when everyone has the civic skills, knowledge, habits, and dispositions to actively and effectively participate.

 Our vision is that youth participation in working together for the common good becomes the common expectation and common experience of all young people in America. Even though youth participation rates are at or near record-high levels, we’re still leaving 3 of every 4 young people out, and participation rates are even lower among youth from underserved low-income communities and communities of color.

 YSA is working to change that.  In July 2021, YSA’s launched our 50% Youth Participation by America250 (50by250.org) campaign to focus all our programs and partnerships on increasing youth participation rates in volunteering and service, voting and civic engagement, and joining and leadership to 50% by America 250 on July 4, 2026, on the way to 100% a decade later so that no one is left out of participating in our democracy

YSA’S WORK

 YSA activates, funds, trains, and recognizes youth and their adult champions, with a goal to activate youth, ages 5-25, through high-quality, youth-led service projects to “Lead ASAP” and acquire 21st Century Skills by solving real community problems. Our goal is that at least 50% of youth engaged in our programs are from underserved, low-income communities.

 One of our three core program strategies to provide opportunities for youth volunteers to participate in national days of service, including the 9/11 Day of Service and Remembrance (September 11, 2022), MLK Day of Service (January 16, 2023), and Global Youth Service Day (tentatively April 21-23, 2023). Volunteering as a child is an expressway to civic participation and days of service are on-ramps to volunteering, especially for first-time volunteers. National Days of Service are perfect opportunities for high quality youth engagement programs to ask youth to get involved, teach them how to be active citizens, remove barriers to their participation, connect them to caring adults, and showcase and celebrate their power to really make a difference. All the youth-led projects involve at least one of YSA’s four ASAP strategies: Awareness, Service, Advocacy, Philanthropy.

  • Awareness: Youth are powerful educating others, sharing information and teaching others to positively change
  • Service: Youth are powerful volunteering, using creativity, time, and talent to directly meet community
  • Advocacy: Youth are powerful advocating, speaking out and joining others to influence policy makers to change policies and laws, especially when they affect young
  • Philanthropy: Youth are powerful giving through collecting and donating financial and in-kind

 Since 2016, YSA has called youth to action to help meet the United Nations’ Global Goals for Sustainable Development (Global Goals). These 17 goals are measurable, action-oriented, concise, aspirational, global in nature, and universally applicable to all countries. By providing a common framework, youth act as global citizens and contribute to solving global problems starting from their own neighborhoods. We leverage the framework to categorize each project based on which issue areas the youth are addressing and report project outputs (number of volunteers, number of hours served, number of people helped/benefited) by each SDG.

 YSA leverages a strong network of:

  • K-12 Schools & Education Organizations – Public, private, charter, and independent schools, and school-affiliated groups such as PTAs, school-community partnerships (such as Communities in Schools), and national service programs that work in schools (City Year, Teach for America, etc.)
  • Afterschool and Positive Youth Development Organizations: 4-H, After-School All-Stars, Big Brothers Big Sisters, Boys & Girls Clubs, Boy Scouts, Camp Fire, FCCLA, FFA, Girls Inc., Girl Scouts, Junior Achievement, SADD, Skills USA, The Y-YMCA, and YWCA; and
  • Community Based Organizations – issue-based nonprofits, volunteer centers, local government agencies, faith-based

 In collaboration with these partners, we activate youth through national days of service (9/11 Day of Service & Remembrance, MLK Day of Service, and Global Youth Service Day).  We fund, train, and recognize our school and organizational partners.