Agency Details:

Youth Leadership Institute

Youth Leadership Institute (YLI) builds communities where youth and their adult allies work together to create positive social change.

The creation of YLI was fundamentally about testing a premise: that young people could be successfully engaged in taking on the big challenges facing their communities. Or, to state it most simply, that youth leadership could work and could matter.

Over the years, YLI has joined with thousands of young people and their adult allies in creating and refining a community-change model that engages youth in assessing community needs and then designing and carrying out advocacy campaigns to address them. This has created fundamental shifts in how youth are perceived as community problem solvers.

Description:
YLI has regional offices in Fresno, San Francisco, San Mateo and San Rafael to support local youth in taking leadership roles to address the critical issues facing them and their communities, including alcohol, tobacco and other drug problems; teen pregnancy; youth violence; nutrition and obesity in society and culture; and self-esteem and marginalization issues among young women.

Out of these community-based programs, YLI's Professional Services team translates lessons learned into curriculum, conducts trainings, and provides participatory evaluation and consulting services that share and demonstrate evidence-based “best practices” with advocates and youth development practitioners across California and nationwide.

History:
Founded in 1989 in Marin County, incorporated in 1991, YLI has gone from a cadre of dedicated volunteers to now a staff of 40 professionals across four offices in central and northern California serving thousands of youth.

Contact people:

Maureen Sedonaen, President & CEO, (phone), (email) Dana Callihan, Chief Operating Officer, (phone), (email)

Main office number: (415) 836-9160 x 229
Office fax number: (415) 455-1683

Address:

555 Northgate Drive, Suite 265 San Rafael, CA 94903 (See a map)

Web Site: http://www.yli.org

Last updated on September 23, 2009