Youth Opportunities Program

YOP strengthens the community through:

• Empowering youth;
• Providing opportunities for youth;
• Encouraging youth civic participation and volunteer work; and
• Advising city government.

Since 1994 the YOP has:

• Allocated more than $2 million in sales tax funds to provide more than 100,000 youth with access to cultural, educational, and recreational activities.

• Funded youth-serving or -supporting programs in more than 150 schools and organizations.

• Compensated young people for contributing more than 55,000 hours of volunteer service to the community.

The YOP offers Boulder youth opportunities to impact their own lives and those of other youth through peer outreach and representation of youth voice in local government and community projects and initiatives, and funding of individual and community grants.

The YOP facilitates:

• Young people educating each other how to prevent risky behaviors.

• Programs that help improve attendance, academics, health and well-being.

• Youths finding their voices.

• Critical thinking, writing, interviewing and other professional skills.

YOP does this work through the Youth Opportunities Advisory Board (YOAB), which is made up of 16 students from four local public and private high schools.

Past YOAB projects include:

• Coordinating the Youth Climate Change Summit.
• Providing outreach to youth to increase awareness of Census 2020.
• Contributing youth perspective to the master plans for Transportation, Open Space and Mountain Parks (OSMP), Parks and Recreation and the Boulder Police Department.
• Creating a video about the achievement gap.
• Conducting a survey about youth needs among City of Boulder youth.
• Organizing the Martin Luther King Jr. Youth Day of Service.

A six-week paid summer internship, where interns are matched with a city department to gain experience in city government. In addition to supporting their assigned department, interns take part in career readiness sessions hosted by YOP staff where they develop and enhance professional skills that will help them succeed in their post and in future endeavors.

Applications for 2024 internships have closed.

The YOP maintains a list of many different local civic engagement programs that middle or high school students can become involved in. Many of them tend to be longer-term commitments than the volunteer opportunities listed in the Youth Volunteer Information booklet, also published by the YOP, which contains a list of local youth volunteer opportunities organized by age.

The Outstanding Youth Volunteer Awards (OYVA) events have been on hold since 2020. We anticipate reinstating these events in spring 2023.

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The City of Boulder's Youth Opportunities Advisory Board presented the 2019 Outstanding Youth Volunteer Awards at a breakfast banquet on May 14 at the Rembrandt Yard. All of the award winners provided outstanding volunteer service to their neighborhoods, communities, schools, and/or agencies in Boulder.