ORGANIZING
Our chapters across 55+ university, community college, and high schools across the country to engage and mobilize students to build our generations’ political power and advocate for change.
Our Campus Chapters
Our Base
Our base of young people across the country come from different backgrounds, communities, and political perspectives. Yet, we are united by a shared commitment to reclaim the American Dream for our generation.
Through regular chapter meetings, policy workshops, advocacy training, and coordinated campaigns, we empower students to become effective advocates for change.
How We Organize
Base Building
Through thousands of conversations with students, focused on the tangible issues that young people face, we have built a base of hundreds of members focused on restoring the American Dream. We focus on reaching the most disillusioned students and helping them rethink their relationship to politics.
Narrative Change
Through speaker event series and workshops, our members delve deep into the issues and policy behind their biggest concerns. From this programming, we are able to shape the political narrative on campus and give young people the skills to take charge in forming policy.
Mobilization
Leveraging their new knowledge and skills, members are able to influence multiple arenas of the political process. Members go to the halls of power through lobby days, advocate on campus for the issues most impacting them through legislative town halls, and influence the national conversation through op-eds and media interviews.
Mobilizing Young People to Make Their Voices Heard
Our members don't just talk about change, they make it happen. Through direct advocacy, our students bring youth voices into the halls of power.
Face-to-Face with Decision Makers
Our chapters host legislative town halls across our campus network, bringing state and federal legislators directly to students. These events create spaces for authentic dialogue between young people and their representatives about the issues that matter most to our generation. From housing policy to AI regulation, students get the chance to share their experiences with legislators and hold them accountable.
Taking Our Message to the Capitol
When decisions are being made that affect our futures, we show up. Our members travel to state capitals and Washington, DC to meet directly with legislators and their staff. Before each lobby day, we train students in effective advocacy techniques, arm them with policy briefings and talking points, and build their confidence to advocate using their lived experiences. Through hundreds of these meetings, we’ve ensured that youth voices are present in policy conversations where they’re too often absent.
Shaping the National Conversation on Young People
Policy isn’t just made in committee rooms; it’s shaped by the stories we tell and the arguments we make in the public square. That’s why we train our members to speak to journalists on record, write compelling op-eds that change minds and shift narratives. Through workshops with journalists from outlets like the San Francisco Chronicle, students learn to transform their experiences and policy knowledge into persuasive pieces that reach thousands of readers. Our members have been published in campus papers, local news outlets, and national publications, bringing youth perspectives to audiences that need to hear them.
Building Youth Power Through Voting
Our members encourage their peers to be active participants by organizing their peers to vote in a nonpartisan manner. Our trained student organizers have had 25,000 conversations connecting their vote to tangible policy with young people, knocked on 10,000 doors, registered 3,900 students to vote, and hosted Get-Out-The-Vote events with 15,000+ young people. In the lead up to the Presidential Election in North Carolina, we mobilized an estimated 30,000 students to vote. A year later, in Virginia, this approach reached more than 6,800 students and secured over 2,400 commitments to vote, helping youth turnout on several campuses match or exceed presidential year levels even as overall turnout declined. By meeting students where they are and connecting voting to the issues they care about, we bring new and infrequent young voters into the process and connecting tangible impacts of policy to their vote.
Get Involved
Interested in starting a YPA chapter on your campus? We'd love to hear from you.
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