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The National Collaborative for Transformative Youth Policy translates youth radical imagination into transformative policy and systems change by building power with young people and their communities. It combines policy, advocacy, and activism to mobilize towards transformative change for youth who face policy violence, collaborating closely with them to create truly youth-centered policy analysis and policy proposals. We seek both to increase equitable access to the existing policy making process,and reshape that process to shift the balance of power, influence, and accountability in our policies to those directly impacted.
We prioritize dismantling systems of power and redistributing power to youth who have faced oppression, discrimination, and marginalization. Our original focuses are in the areas of economic justice, mental health, and the criminal legal system, but our work is not done until we address all issues that shape the lives of the young people we work for and alongside. We ground our work in justice, joy, and equity, and emphasize cross-racial solidarity. In all elements of our organization, we seek to reflect a radical and visionary anti-hierarchical and anti-capitalist approach. We hope that by embodying what we seek to create, we move closer to seeing our vision realized.
We envision a world where young people experience liberation: thriving, abundance, true community, and healing. To achieve this vision we must dismantle oppressive systems of power, adopt abolitionist and anticolonial frameworks as core guiding principles, and support efforts that limit the influence of money in policymaking. In their place we must share power, build solidarity, and collaboratively create new decision making structures where young people determine their political reality.
