Closing the Achievement Gap One Training at a Time

The National Youth Leadership Council is expanding its flagship program, the National Youth Leadership Training, from a single week-long training in Minnesota to three week-long trainings in the summer of 2013. NYLT will be offered twice in the Midwest from July 12-19 and July 21-28, 2013 in Sandstone, Minn., and once on the west coast in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The goal of NYLT is to deliver high quality leadership and service-learning training to more youth in more communities. “Staff came back from NYLT last year feeling really excited and agreed [the program] needed to be offered more than once,” said Amanda Larson, Youth Initiatives Lead at NYLC. “We’re hoping that by expanding the program we will reach more students, more communities, and ultimately participants will help close the achievement gap in their home communities.”

Each training session will focus on the achievement gap and include programmatic elements related to self-discovery, cultural exchange, leadership-building, and service, elements that have made a difference in the lives of NYLT participants for the past thirty years. “My biggest takeaway from NYLT was the leadership skills I gained and the enlightenment I received that I will use in my future,” said NYLT alumni and NYLC Youth Advisory Council member Haley Holliday. “NYLT will forever be an experience that I will look back on and view as a defining time in my life!”

For more information about NYLT, visit www.nylc.org/nylt. To help us reach our goal of raising $15,000 in scholarships to ensure that cost is not a barrier for attendance, donate to the NYLC GiveMN page on November 15, Give to the Max Day at www.givemn.org/nylc.