YES! Youth for Environmental Sanity

Connecting, Inspiring & Collaborating with Young Chancemaker

About us

YES! is a social-profit organization, founded in 1990, that connects, inspires and collaborates with changemakers to join forces for thriving, just and sustainable ways of life for all. We work at the meeting point of internal, interpersonal, and systemic transformation. Our flagship programs are known as Jams, where we work with diverse teams to bring together young and intergenerational changemakers to engage in self-discovery, community-building across divides, and systemic visioning to connect the dots for social change.

Our Mission
YES! connects, inspires and collaborates with change-makers to build thriving, just and balanced ways of life for all. We primarily work with people ages 18-35, but are increasingly also working intergenerationally as well.

Our Vision
• Thriving: We believe that life is precious and magnificent, and that we were put on this Earth for more than mere survival. We all have the birthright to love, to prosper, to grow, and to learn ever more what it means to be who we are.
• Just: We believe that people everywhere deserve to be free and respected as they are, to have their basic human needs met, and to experience their gifts recognized and called forth. Recognizing ever widening gaps of wealth, safety and freedom, we value sustained attention and commitment to equitability, diversity, partnership across differences, and shared decision-making.
• Sustainable: We believe personal and planetary ecology are inseparable, and that everything we do sends out ripples not only to the whole Earth community, but to all future generations. We seek to walk consciously upon the Earth, bringing intentionality to every choice we make and its impact upon all of life.

We support leadership in three main ways:
• direct facilitation, organizing, and funding of Leadership Jams and similar programs;
• coaching and mentoring Jam alumni and other young and intergenerational leaders;
• co-sponsoring programs with like-minded individuals, organizations and movements to weave a stronger web for social change and manifest the world we want.

Activities
Jams and programs - Each YES! Jam brings together approximately thirty outstanding young and/or intergenerational changemakers for a week of co-learning, skills-sharing and community-building. YES! Jams create transformative fields of shared inquiry in which leaders deepen the root system behind the commitments, prayers and actions that move through their lives. Some of the Jams currently happening include:
• New England Jam
• India Youth Leadership Jam
• HOME (Healing Our Movement Ecosystem) – An Environmental Movement Jam,
• Law and Social Change Jam
• Nova Scotia Gaels Jam
• Arts and Social Change Jam

Shilpa Jain is the Executive Director of YES!.

For other net participants we can offer an expert guidance through trained staff, give an expert opinion, procure expert information and establish new contacts in the field of our work.