Youth Voice Leading the Way: RAISE’s Support of YETI
The RAISE Center is proud to support the Youth Engagement Transition Initiative, also known as YETI. YETI is a national youth leadership and engagement group that brings together young adults with disabilities to shape transition resources, strengthen systems, and make sure youth voice is part of the decisions that impact young people’s lives.
Through YETI, RAISE helps connect youth leadership directly to Parent Centers, state partners, national technical assistance efforts, and transition systems across the country.
Explore Youth Engagement Now
YETI helps support the Youth Engagement Now, or YEN, website by informing and creating youth-centered resources about transition, advocacy, leadership, and systems change.
Youth Engagement Now is a national resource hub created with youth voice at the center. It includes practical tools, videos, guides, and resources that can be used by youth, families, Parent Centers, educators, vocational rehabilitation agencies, and other systems partners.
Visit Youth Engagement Now
Visit Youth Engagement Now to explore youth-created and youth-informed transition resources.
Visit Youth Engagement Now
Supporting Parent Centers Through Youth Leadership
From 2021–2025, RAISE supported Parent Centers in strengthening meaningful youth engagement across the country through Regional Youth Development Institutes held in each RSA Parent Center region.
These institutes brought together youth, young adults, Parent Center staff, adult allies, and partners to build skills, share strategies, and strengthen the role of youth voice in transition work. The goal was not only to talk about youth engagement, but to help Parent Centers build structures where young people with disabilities could lead, advise, and shape the work.
RAISE also supported the development of regional youth advisory councils. These councils created ongoing opportunities for young adults with disabilities to provide input, identify barriers, recommend solutions, and support regional and national transition priorities.
Through this work, RAISE helped Parent Centers move from one-time youth participation to long-term youth partnership.
From Youth Advocates for Change to YETI
RAISE has a long history of supporting youth leadership. Before YETI became a national group, RAISE supported Youth Advocates for Change, also known as YAFC. YAFC gave young adults with disabilities a space to talk about transition, advocacy, employment, education, independent living, accessibility, and the systems that impact their lives.
As RAISE’s youth engagement work continued to grow, YAFC connected with the youth engagement efforts of the National Technical Assistance Center on Transition: The Collaborative, also known as NTACT:C:C. Together, RAISE and NTACT:C:C brought these efforts together to form YETI as a national youth engagement group.
This connection allowed YAFC’s history of youth-led advocacy to grow into a broader national effort focused on transition, systems change, Parent Center support, and meaningful youth partnership.
Listen to the YAFC Podcast
The Youth Advocates for Change Podcast is an important part of RAISE’s youth engagement story. Through the podcast, young adults with disabilities shared conversations about transition, advocacy, leadership, accessibility, employment, education, and community life.
The YAFC Podcast helped highlight the power of youth voice and laid part of the foundation for the national work now happening through YETI.
Listen to the YAFC Podcast
Hear directly from young adults with disabilities as they share stories, ideas, and conversations about advocacy, transition, and leadership.
Listen to the YAFC Podcast →
Connect With Our Work
Learn more about the projects and resources connected to RAISE’s youth engagement work.
Youth Engagement Now →
Youth Advocates for Change Podcast →
RAISE Center Youth Engagement Resources →