Youth United for Change (YUC) develops young leaders in Philadelphia with a critical political, historical, and economic understanding of society, and empowers them to improve the quality of their lives and communities. Stated simply, YUC builds with African American and Latino young people who are most impacted by systemic injustice.  We help them learn about social systems and practice organizing and civic engagement skills to make the change they want to see in their communities. More deeply, YUC is a community of students, dreamers, artists, thinkers, writers, painters, singers, dancers. As culturally aware African American and Latino young people, we know we are descended from brilliant and strong people who survived the horrors of genocide, enslavement and colonization. In our blood, pulses the power of people who chose survival.  We are walking miracles.  We ground our work in the cultural traditions that have sustained us as a People. We organize and build power to make change from a foundation rooted in victory and from a place of joy, imagination and possibility.

At YUC, we understand that one of the primary functions of oppression is to separate a person from their own sense of humanity.  We know that freedom means we have the power to recognize, affirm and express our full selves in this life and time.  We know that we are connected to a lineage of freedom fighters who span oceans and continents.  We build our power by tapping into those roots and growing strong by learning their wisdom and connecting lessons to our current conditions so that we can continue our people’s work toward our collective liberation.  We see our Ancestors such as Ella Baker, Malcolm X, Fannie Lou Hamer, Octavius Catto, Marcus Garvey, Harriet Tubman, Grace Lee Boggs, William Still, Delores Huertas as examples of people who committed themselves to caring about making change that has positive impacts for generations.  We work to continue that tradition of liberation.