Information about the 2027 Youth Driven Spaces conference coming soon!
2026 YDS Conference Planning Committee
Past Conferences
2026
we celebrated community with attendees from 17 community organizations and were gave $5,000 in pitch awards to 5 groups looking to make a difference in their community!
2025
The 2025 Conference was hosted in the style of y2k and included teen-led workshops on starting a nonprofit, diet culture, burnout prevention and more.
2024: Concept of self
The 2024 YDS Conference included teen-led workshops on self love, advocacy through democracy, caring for yourself on social media, and improvising to express yourself.
2023: Transitioning to adulthood
The 2023 YDS Conference included teen-led workshops on Finances 101, Reproductive Justice and Contraception, Mental Health, Habitual/Responsible Voting, and Conscious Activism.
2022: Mental Health
Rescuing the conference from the confines of zoom, teens decided to focus this year's conference on the importance of mental health.
2019
With eight youth-driven workshops this year, we covered anything you could hope to foster in a youth driven space.
The First Ever YDS Conference
The one that began it all.
The first conference was different in many ways; location, sponsors, and even being held on a Sunday but the concept was a home run and set the foundations for the YDS Conference we know and love today.
Thanks to the Ralph C. Wilson Foundation for their generous support for this event!