The Washington Youth Alliance empowers youth across Washington State by fostering essential life skills, promoting digital literacy, and preparing young people for educational and career success. We center our mission around the creation of youth-led chapters that advocate for crucial societal issues, including mental health, while ensuring that young people are well-equipped for the technological and professional demands of the future. Through community engagement and strategic partnerships, we strive to build a supportive framework that enables every young person to succeed and lead in their communities.

The terms student and youth are often used interchangeably, but this leaves out a significant youth population—the most vulnerable. Our strategic vision emphasizes focusing on all youth. This means we are eventually moving away from just school-based organizing work to focus on collective issues that impact youth outside of school. There are a lot of intersections: gun violence prevention, digital literacy, etc. There are also a lot of unique problems that youth who are not in the education system experience, like access to healthy food, career readiness that isn't going to college, and more. In particular, black and brown students face these barriers the most.