The National QYD Project

QYD stands for Quality Youth Development. We define this as substantive, measurable, and sustainable community actions that support, engage, inspire, and empower youth. The QYD Project is a certification process that evaluates a community’s commitment to quality youth development through activity and awareness. A village, town, city, or region may achieve up to 10 benchmarks demonstrating youth engagement and empowerment to become a QYD Community. The achievement of QYD Community certification will benefit local youth by more actively engaging the broader community in a discussion about positive youth development principles and building a deeper commitment of community support. Certification also benefits the community as a whole through the success of its young residents, and the greater likelihood that youth will become productive members of their community into young adulthood.