United Future Leaders Ambassadors: How do we engage young leaders in community service?

The United Future Leaders Ambassadors is a program developed out of the expressed desire of students to remain active in a youth leadership development program originally focusing on fifth and sixth grades. Our application brief discusses distinctions between youth development and youth leadership development, the evolutionary nature of our program and general/program specific lessons learned. Applying eight years of ongoing program evaluation and adaptation, authors provide suggestions for other leadership educators to incorporate active community service components to engage and retain adolescents long-term. Programming concerns such as developing and maintaining youth interest in service leadershipdevelopment, embracing technology for programming and research data, developing student and family “buy in,” and integrating new youth into service programming from a variety of backgrounds are discussed.