Youth Action Fund

Youth Action Fund (YAF) is a youth-led, Central Florida-based organization dedicated to breaking down barriers to activism for young people. Our efforts identify emerging movement leaders and equip them with otherwise out-of-reach tools and relationships needed to build sustainable, powerful grassroots campaigns that advance racial, economic, and gender justice.

In Florida, the “testing grounds for autocracy”, our political ecosystem suppresses youth-led, Queer organizing by gutting student organizations, criminalizing protest, and restricting access to voting. It’s a deliberate strategy to dismantle youth movement infrastructure and keep our efforts uncoordinated, under-resourced, and short-lasting. 

Emerging movement leaders are often left to navigate the challenging movement ecosystem alone- facing financial barriers, new legal threats, and systemic disenfranchisement. 

Each program that Youth Action Fund leads provides youth-led, grassroots efforts with the funding, tools/data (typically reserved for established, legacy organizations), and relationships necessary to overcome structural challenges to becoming effective organizers behind community-driven campaigns that advance collective liberation. 

Our Programs: 

• SPARKs: Incubation of additional Central-Florida based youth-led SPARK campaigns focused on LGBTQ, Climate, Economic, Racial, Reproductive, and Electoral justice. 
• ACTIVATE: Central-Florida based actions to support C3-compliant civic education and grassroots advocacy (voter registration, petitioning) efforts led by newly-recruited young people. 
• Training & Bootcamps: Three in person, multi-day retreats once per quarter to develop leaders in the craft of organizing, build meaningful connections, and offer physical safe-spaces for participants- with processes that “match” them into movement leadership or Civil Society staff roles to apply those skills immediately.