“Best experience of my entire life.” This is a typical comment from participants in the National Youth Leadership Training. Indeed, teachers, youth workers, parents, and the youth themselves often report significant growth in the commitment and motivation of youth long after camp is over. Since its inception in 1983, the purpose of the National Youth Leadership Training has been to act as a catalyst for action by motivating and empowering students to make a difference, while connecting them with the knowledge, skills, and resources that enable them to reach their goals and improve their communities. NYLC’s staff uniquely combines the very best experiential education programming with a pointed focus on leadership and service to the community. NYLT requires participants to assess their innate abilities and current belief systems, and then impels them into personally challenging experiences and opportunities for service. Participants emerge after the eight-day experience with a new sense of themselves, their roles and responsibilities to their communities, and an intrinsic sense of self-worth and a desire to give back to others. Each year, as a result of NYLT, youth teams create action plans in response to the educational inequity and opportunity gaps witnessed in their own communities. One group designed a curriculum for a high school course that addresses the question: What is a good education? One increased awareness about the achievement gap among their peers, collecting, editing, and publishing narratives, articles, poetry, and art submissions from elementary through high school students all focused on the achievement gap, and then published a district-wide newspaper focused on the top that teachers could use within classroom lessons. Another group addressed the role teacher-student relations play in the achievement gap in their school by facilitating conversations and teambuilding activities among groups of students and teachers. In order to ensure follow-through, most participants come to NYLT as part of a school or organizational team. In addition, adults from the sponsoring organizations are expected to participate in the final three days of NYLT, July 19-21, 2012. During this time, youth and adults share ideas and plan ways to take action in their home communities. In the end, it is the youth themselves who make NYLT a success. They approach it with passion and excitement, and they receive from each other a remarkable, life-changing experience.