The Youth Leadership Institute: Twenty Years of Innovation and Action

Founded over twenty years ago in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Youth Leadership Institute (YLI) pioneered a youth development model that creates opportunities for young people to grow and develop a core set of leadership skills and competencies while positively impacting their communities. This brand of youth leadership in turn serves to alter the perceptions and behavior towards youth in those communities.

In Northern California and the Central Valley, YLI has four community-based institutes in the counties of Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo, and Fresno.

This monograph shines light on the Institute, in all its complexity: to showcase the range and breadth of the pivotal work YLI has been so privileged to engage in with young people, their adult allies (parents, teachers, youth workers, community leaders) and the systems and institutions that support their work and the change they are seeking to be in the world.