National Consortium on Leadership and Disability for Youth (NCLD/Y)

The National Consortium on Leadership and Disability for Youth (NCLD/Y) serves as a national youth-led information, training, and resource center. NCLD/Y has a four-pronged focus on working on developing leaders, developing the capacity of centers for independent living to serve those leaders, the capacity of the staff working directly with the leaders, and supporting the cadre of youth with disabilities-related organizations.

Housed at the Institute for Educational Leadership and funded by the Administration on Developmental Disabilities. NCLD-Youth is taking a positive development approach to working with the next generation of disability leaders, and developing materials to better prepare them for the transition to adulthood, and leadership, rather than focus on the negative statistics one hears so often about youth with disabilities.

The specific goals of the NCLD/Y are to:

1. Develop training modules to inform, educate, and train youth and emerging leaders with developmental disabilities in disability policy

2. Work with a network of Youth Service Professionals to improve their capacity to serve youth and emerging leaders with developmental disabilities

3. Work with the network of Centers of Independent Living on increasing their capacity to serve youth and emerging leaders with developmental disabilities

4. Help grow and sustain emerging leader led coalitions in developing various efforts around the country.

By utilizing the five areas of youth development/leadership—learning, connecting, thriving, working, and leading—NCLD/Youth strives to support and promote youth and emerging leaders in the disability community.