Across New York City, young people are leading. They’re organizing classmates, showing up at community meetings, turning school hallways, parks, and public housing courtyards into spaces for dialogue, healing, and action. With support from The Pinkerton Foundation, CitizensNYC is investing directly in that power through a new cohort of 15 Youth Leadership Councils and youth-led initiatives focused on civic engagement in under-resourced communities.
Each group received a microgrant of $3,500 for a youth-designed, youth-led project, along with capacity-building support and opportunities to connect with other young leaders across the city. We’ll bring this cohort together for a citywide kick-off convening and a Youth Leadership Conference in partnership with NYC Service that lifts up their work and their voices.
Across the five boroughs, Youth Leadership Councils and community initiatives are already creating space for young people to name what isn’t working in their schools and neighborhoods, and to do something about it. What’s often missing is funding, visibility, and connection. Too many of these councils are doing powerful work in isolation, without the resources they need to grow or the network to learn from peers who are facing similar challenges.
This initiative is designed to change that. By bringing 15 youth leadership groups into a shared cohort and resourcing them with both dollars and support, we’re helping to connect dots that are already on the map. Each group sets its own agenda based on local needs and lived experience. These initiatives are:
- NYC Human Resources Administration “Youth Be Heard” Youth Leadership Council
- Harmony 4 All
- The Circle Keepers
- Intergenerational Change Initiative
- Adams Street Youth Leadership Council
- District 39 City Council Youth Leadership Council
- Youth Leadership Council- NYC Law Department Family Court Division
- New Heights Middle School
- Bengali Interfaith Youth Empowerment
- Hood Works Inc.
- 149th South Ozone Park Civic Association
- National Clean Water Collective
- NCWC Youth Council
- O2NYC
- 88th Precinct Youth Council Inc.
Some are focused on voter education and civic learning with their peers. Others are tackling community safety, mental health, or public space. Still others are organizing around environmental justice, language access, or housing. The projects look different in each neighborhood, but they share a common thread: young people leading, and adults showing up as partners rather than directors.
Our role at CitizensNYC is to back that leadership with practical tools. Councils receive microgrants to move their ideas into action, along with support for things like project planning, storytelling, partnership-building, and navigating city systems. We work closely with the adult facilitators who support each council, so that the infrastructure around these young leaders helps them grow rather than getting in their way. Communities don’t need to be told what to do; they need resources and trust to do what they already know is needed.
Connection is as important as funding. Over the course of the year, we’ll bring all 15 councils together at a kick-off convening to meet, share what they’re working on, and see that their local efforts are part of something bigger than any single school or block. The Youth Leadership Conference, held in collaboration with NYC Service, will give young people a platform to present their work to one another and to citywide stakeholders who will have an opportunity to see young New Yorkers not as “future leaders” but as current decision-makers and problem-solvers.
At its core, this cohort affirms what we see every day in our work: youth leadership is not an add-on. It’s essential to any serious vision of democracy, racial and economic justice, and long-term resilience in New York City. Young people are already organizers, caregivers, translators, and innovators in their communities. When we trust them with real responsibility and real resources, they design solutions adults might never imagine and change what’s possible in their neighborhoods.
Over the coming months, we’ll be sharing more from this cohort: stories from individual Youth Leadership Councils, reflections from young leaders and adult allies, and highlights from the kick-off and Youth Leadership Conference. We are grateful to The Pinkerton Foundation for their support of this initiative, which helps young people in New York City reach their full potential through meaningful civic engagement and leadership opportunities.
