Youth Empowerment America is a nonprofit 501(c)3 organization whose mission is to develop sustainable organizing models for creating positive community change through the effective utilization of netroots and grassroots approaches.

YEA was founded in 1996 by David Plutado Fugate, when he was 16 years old.

David’s desire was to create an organization

that recognized young people’s ability to envision, initiate, organize, promote, manage, and serve in decision making capacities for community improvement projects in their communities; while simultaneously addressing the biases society has against young people.

YEA was formally incorporated in the November 2000. YEA was recognized as a charitable organization by the IRS in November, 2002.

Our Values

• We organize for broad diversity and all inclusiveness, bringing as many relevant perspectives into the thinking as possible.
• We organize on the basis of vision, caring, and responsibility and not on the basis of anger or fear.
• We organize to recruit ever more allies and not to identify enemies or attack or embarrass any so called opposition.
• We organize to propose solutions and not to protest wrongs.
• We organize for the common good and not for self interest.
• We organize for completion and to win, not just be ethically or morally correct.
• We organize with a shared commitment to struggle together for positive change. This struggle is threefold: personal, interpersonal and global.