Young People's Alliance

The YPA Fellows Program

The Young People’s Alliance is thrilled to announce the launch of our inaugural Fellows Program, an extraordinary opportunity for young, aspiring change-makers who are passionate about shaping the future through youth-centered advocacy, policy research, social media influencing, and organizing.

Apply to be a YPA Fellow

About the Young People’s Alliance

The Young People’s Alliance (YPA) is a student-led, bipartisan nonprofit that advocates for youth issues. Our students have written data privacy legislation that has been introduced in North Carolina, are influencing federal tech policy in Congress, and have been featured in news outlets including the Washington Post, Bloomberg, and People Magazine.

About the Program

The Young People’s Alliance Fellows Program is a dynamic, project-based initiative designed to cultivate the next generation of policy leaders. Over the course of 6 - 12 months, fellows will engage in an immersive experience where they will:

Develop a Project: Identify an issue, design a solution, and work to implement their solution at a local, state, or national level.

Receive Expert Mentorship: Work closely with seasoned youth advocates from our team, gaining insights, guidance, and feedback to advance your project.

Build Professional Skills: Through workshops, seminars, and hands-on experience, enhance your abilities in research, analysis, public speaking, advocacy, and more.

Network with Peers and Leaders: Connect with a network of motivated young individuals and established experts in various policy arenas.

Have a Real Impact: We accept young people who we believe have a real chance of success at their project, and enable young people to create meaningful change that makes people’s lives better.

Showcase Your Work: Present your policy project to stakeholders and potential funders during the program’s capstone event.

Request for Proposals:

We are looking for young people with ambitious projects to make real change on policy issues. Projects are divided into tracks focusing on Advocacy, Research and Policy, Organizing, and Comms.

Tracks

Advocacy: Projects that promote youth-focused policy at the state, and local levels. This can include new initiatives, like introducing new legislation on an issue affecting young people, or can include advocacy to support existing legislation.
Successful Example: Sam wrote and introduced legislation to protect young people’s data privacy and mental health in the North Carolina state legislature, and got 62 state representatives and 12 nonprofits to endorse the bill.

Research and Policy: Projects that research youth issues or come up with solutions to issues facing young people.
Successful Example: Noah researched how chatbots affect young people’s mental health, wrote legislation addressing this issue, and published a letter to the White House.

Organizing: Projects that support young people on high school or college campuses. This can include both policy changes on your campus and starting a group to otherwise activate young people.
Successful Example: Rachel advocated for a no-class Election Day at her college, and got the administration to send an email asking professors to excuse absences on Election Day.

Communications: Projects that use media to support youth power. This may include social media or traditional media. For social media projects, applicants should be familiar with our position on social media as a tool that can be a means of connection and advocacy, but also that it can foster unthoughtful political discourse and mental health issues.
Successful Example 1: Ben started a social media account that helped people rethink their social media usage and promoted conversations about online safety policy.
Successful Example 2: Ava wrote an op-ed about the importance of including young people’s perspectives in policy that affects them.

Projects that would involve both researching/writing legislation and advocating for it can apply to either Policy or Advocacy, depending on which track would be the bulk of their work. We will work with successful candidates to determine the best track for their project.

Issues

We are a nonpartisan organization and are open to projects across a variety of issues. We seek projects that are innovative, achievable, impactful, and are likely to gain bipartisan support.

While partisan work can be impactful, we are looking for young people with innovative ideas that surface novel policy ideas outside of what you hear about on the news.

Who Should Apply

This program is for young people who:

Are 14-22 (although people working on youth issues outside of this age range will still be considered)
Have a non-stop drive to positively impact society. Applicants will spend at least 10 hours a week on their project for the duration of the program, but some projects may require a higher level of commitment.
Have a self-starting mentality, are willing to fail, and are growth-oriented.
Regardless of political affiliation, are independent thinkers, are pragmatic about achieving change, and are willing to work with people from a variety of backgrounds and perspectives.

Why this Program

In 2020, the founders of the Young People’s Alliance knew that they wanted to make our democracy better, but they didn’t know where to start. Over the next year, they sent hundreds of emails to legislators that went ignored, created legislation that didn’t get introduced, and wrote op-eds that went unpublished. Years later, we are now having a real impact on federal policy and our work has been recognized by national media outlets including the Washington Post, Bloomberg, and People Magazine. We know that we would not have achieved this if it weren’t for our incredible team of people who have been role models for each other and kept each other motivated. After years of learning the hard way how to effectively advocate and make change, we are sharing our wisdom with young people who want to have an impact, accelerating their journey so that they can do work that aligns with their values.