About Youth
Community Service

YCS was founded in 1990 as a collaboration between the cities of Palo Alto and East Palo Alto, and the Palo Alto Unified and Ravenswood School Districts. Youth Community Service actively works with youth and community leaders to engage in a wide range of public service projects throughout the Mid-Peninsula region of the San Francisco Bay Area.

Over three decades, we’ve developed a keen focus in three intersecting domains:

  1. Peer Leadership: Providing a learning environment grounded in communication, reciprocity, and trust

  2. Social-Emotional Learning and Wellness: Helping youth to develop healthy identities, manage emotions, achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions

  3. Service-Based Learning: Helping youth to enrich their classroom learning by volunteering in their community and engaging in reflection activities to deepen their understanding of what is being taught

YCS programs are aligned with national service learning standards utilizing the IPARD model of service learning and are based in Search Institutes research on Developmental Assets and Developmental Relationships.

We’re always looking for new partnerships and especially youth looking to get involved and bring about positive change in their community. To become a part of YCS, just get in touch!

YCS Racial
Equity Pledge

YCS, in community with our nonprofits partners, worked collectively on The Nonprofit Racial Equity Pledge pledge and are committed to engaging our communities in tangible action steps. YCS is grateful for the leadership of SVCN for guiding us through this process. We have pledged to create a race equity, diversity, and inclusion resource hub to support nonprofits in their race equity journeys.