YW Boston’s Youth Leadership Initiative – or InIt – is a selective, ten-month teen development program that provides leadership and workplace skills, and ignites a passion in high school students to create more socially responsible communities.
InIt’s goal is to build students’ confidence; their abilities to work across differences; and ultimately design, implement and engage other teens in a community action project that addresses an inequity in their school, community group or neighborhood.
Administered by professionally-trained YW Boston staff and adult volunteers, the program introduces teens to peers from different racial, religious, socio-economic and geographic backgrounds and builds them into a network of student leaders who can affect change in the world around them.
The program serves as both a foundation to support a school or teen organization’s growing commitment to community service and/or student leadership development, and as a complement to existing programs. It also builds students’ college admissions profile, aiding them in pursuit of acceptance and scholarships. Eighty-eight percent of InIt's 3,700 alumni have attended a four-year college.
[Click here to read the Boston Globe's editorial endorsement of InIt]