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We’re excited to welcome young activists from around the country to the 2022 Youth Activist Institute! This year’s theme is Fighting Back While Under Attack.

Over the last few years, young people around the country have felt the attacks on bodily autonomy in all aspects of their lives. We are coming together to train and prepare you to build and take radical political action in the upcoming year.

During the YAI, we hope you will connect with one another across the 10 councils in our Youth Activist Network, receive training in grassroots organizing for change, hear from speakers around a variety of topics connected to our work, and speak out to make tangible, powerful change.

Featured Speaker: Kabir Amari

Kabir Amari has served Broward County Public Schools LGBTQ+ students, staff and families by providing intersectional and social justice-centered queer and trans-inclusive programming and initiatives. Some of their proudest moments include planning Gay-Straight Alliance summits, creating a professional development course entitled “Educating LGBTQ+ Students with an Intersectional Framework,” establishing the District’s first scholarship for LGBTQ+ student-athletes and more. Kabir Amari believes that youth are the experts of their own experiences and intentionally includes student leaders in all levels of LGBTQ+ decision making.

About Advocates for Youth

Advocates for Youth envisions a society in which all young people are valued, respected and treated with dignity; sexuality is accepted as a healthy part of being human; and youth sexual development is normalized  and embraced.  In such a world, all youth and young adults are celebrated for who they are and afforded honest, affirming, inclusive sex education; access to confidential, universal sexual health services; and the economic, educational, and social power to exercise their bodily autonomy and make informed decisions regarding their health and well-being.

Advocates for Youth partners with young people and their adult allies to champion youth rights to bodily autonomy and build power to transform policies, programs and systems to secure sexual health and equity for all youth.

Our Mission, Vision, and Legacy

Our Programs

Youth Programs at the Youth Activist Institute


Abortion Out Loud

Abortion Out Loud, formerly the 1 in 3 Campaign, harnesses the power of storytelling, grassroots organizing, leadership development, and policy advocacy to end abortion stigma and strengthen support for young people's access to abortion. Activists leading the Abortion Out Loud project in their community host abortion speakouts, lead public education campaigns, and work with campus and local officials to strengthen young people's access to abortion services.

Engaging Communities around HIV Organizing

Through ECHO, Advocates recruits, trains and supports a cohort of young people living with HIV to serve as leaders in the fight to end HIV stigma and criminalization. ECHO leaders recognize HIV’s disparate impact on young people of color, including Black and Latino YMSM and trans youth of color. Members use social media campaigns, peer education, storytelling, and media outreach to raise awareness of the interconnection between HIV disparity, racism, homophobia, and transphobia and advocate for the inclusion of youth most impacted by HIV in the planning, implementation, and evaluation of programs and policies that affect their health and well being. ECHO activists contribute to My Story Out Loud, a digital storytelling campaign dedicated to uplifting the narratives of LGBTQ+ youth of color across the nation.

Free the Pill

The Free the Pill youth council is a cohort of youth organizers working to build public support for the #FreeThePill campaign, a national effort to bring a birth control pill over the counter, covered by insurance, and without age restrictions. The youth council highlights the specific barriers that young people face to getting the care they need, especially young people of color and LGBTQ young people. In addition to this national work, Free the Pill council members work to expand access to contraception at the state and local level.

Know Your IX

Know Your IX is a survivor- and youth-led project that aims to empower students to end sexual and dating violence in their schools. Know Your IX Organizers educate college and high school students about their rights to an education free from gender violence and discrimination. Create lasting change through training, organizing, and supporting student survivor activists in challenging their educational institutions to address violence and discrimination. And advocate for policy change at the local, state, and federal levels to ensure meaningful systemic action to end gender violence.

Muslim Youth Leadership Council

The Muslim Youth Leadership Council (MyLC) is a group of Muslim-identifying people ages 17-24 from across the country, working locally and nationally as activists, organizers, writers, leaders and more to promote LGBTQ rights, immigrant rights, and sexual and reproductive health and rights for Muslims. MyLC focuses on four main areas of work: countering Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hate, strengthening sexual health and reproductive rights for young Muslims, promoting LGBTQ rights and supporting queer Muslims, and working towards racial justice and countering anti-Blackness in our communities. MyLC advocates for the inclusion of young Muslim identifying people in Reproductive Justice programming and promotion of health and rights, creates resources for queer Muslim youth, and hosts the #MuslimAnd campaign.

Student Organizing Team

The Student Organizing Team is a cohort of high school and college students who serve as youth activists leading the reproductive justice movement at the local, state, and national level. With the support of Advocates for Youth, they run strategic issue-based campaigns to bring material improvements to young people’s sexual health and rights at their schools. Some of their campaigns for change in their communities include organizing for free menstrual products, free condoms, gender-neutral restrooms, and other issues in the fight for comprehensive sex education, contraceptive access, abortion access, LGBTQ health and rights, and HIV prevention.

YouthResource Leadership Program (YouthResource)

YouthResource Leadership Program is designed by and for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) young people of color. YouthResource members advocate around LGBTQ health and rights issues on college campuses, in their communities, and at the state and federal level. A few LGBTQ health and rights issues include expanding access to PrEP, training healthcare staff on LGBTQ inclusion, adopting gender-neutral restrooms, ensuring access to HIV treatment and care. YouthResource members contribute to My Story Out Loud, a digital storytelling campaign dedicated to uplifting the narratives of LGBTQ+ youth of color across the nation.

Young Women of Color 4 Reproductive Justice Council (YWOC4RJ)

The Young Women of Color for Reproductive Justice Leadership Council (YWOC4RJLC) is a group of 14-24 year old young women of color organizers who are working to educate, empower, and fight back against issues impacting their community through a reproductive justice lens. We aid young women of color in harnessing their power to organize to create a society free from all forms of oppression. The Leadership Council serves as the steering committee for the YWOC4RJ Collective, which has over 300 young WOC based around the US, and regularly engages the larger collective through online and offline activism opportunities.

Youth Activist Alliance Leaders

Youth Activist Alliance Leaders are youth organizers who run local or state-level grassroots campaigns for change in youth sexual health and rights and reproductive justice. By joining our Youth Activist Network (YAN), youth serve as local lead organizers for a city, county or state alliance. By co-creating bold visions in the fight for a world free from oppression, each alliance will launch their own campaign for change targeting their county and city councils, school boards, and state legislatures, and build up a powerful base of young activists committed to the movement for reproductive justice.

Thank you to our generous sponsors!

 

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