The QYD Project™
About the QYD Project™
The Quality Youth Development, or QYD, Project™ is a credentialing process that measures the achievement of 10 Benchmarks by a village/town/city/region in order for it to become certified as a “QYD Community.” These are communities that have taken substantive, measurable, and sustainable community actions that support, engage, inspire, and empower youth.
Achievement of this credential will demonstrate that a community is actively promoting youth engagement and youth empowerment and will become the quality standard that other communities will seek to achieve in order to retain youth in their communities and to attract residents, businesses, and employees.
Essex and Essex Junction became certified as a one star QYD Community™ in June 2020. We are currently working towards becoming a two star community!
​
“I am so thrilled that Essex is now recognized as a certified Quality Youth Development Community…the Essex community empowered me as a youth. Essex truly is a QYD Community.”
​
- Dominique Sweat, Chair of the Essex QYD Steering Committee​​
​​
“We applaud the success of the Middlebury and Essex communities in pioneering this new community certification process. Although QYD is a new approach, it is based on decades of experience and evidence. QYD holds great promise as a strategy to promote both youth and community development”.
- Barbara Abraham, Chair of the QYD Credential Committee
