Young Governors Program was founded in 2011 by Delia Kim Sorto with a mission to equip youth with the tools they need to create positive change with their peers, families, community, and the world. Young Governors is a youth organizing program model that hires and trains teens to be Community Organizers and address issues in their community. Youth are empowered to be the advocates, organizers, and educators among their peers through workshops, projects, and service. Young Governors is youth-led and youth-organized project based program where they are tasked to address local issues in the Elmhurst and Corona neighborhood by integrating extensive and intensive community needs assessments, teamwork, and meaningful public discourse in order to cultivate a body of informed and empowered young leaders cognizant of their agency and responsibility as change-makers of the present and the future. 

 

Over the past 11 years, YG youth have graduated more than 80 youth changemakers, engaged even more youth volunteers, and have impacted the Elmhurst community in positive ways through a variety of projects such as Go Green Elmhurst, Homelessness and Misconceptions, Food and Culture and most recently in 2021 with Environmental Justice: Join The Revolution, Stop All Pollution.