Founded by Shawn Young in 2007, Advocates for Young Adults is functioning as the “AARP” for the Young Adult (ages 18-34) population, providing education, asset building tools and advocacy for this underserved demographic.

A4YA’s initial focus has been on developing content, teaching life skills classes and providing asset building tools throughout Colorado. Our focus has been to teach the skills that are essential in order to thrive as an adult, yet are not focused on in the school or in homes.

These skills include:

• Civic Education – Understanding taxes, government/community resources, rights and responsibilities of adults
• Workforce Education – Understanding corporate and business cultures, understanding benefits
• Financial Education – Budgeting, credit, debt management, insurance and saving
• Health Education – Understanding health management as a component of asset building and protection

Since inception, A4YA has touched over 1500 people with our classes and content. Through our asset building programs we have helped over 11,000 people and kept over $8 million in the hands of low and moderate income Coloradoans. Going forward, A4YA looks to build a national membership base with A4YA chapters in all 50 states. A4YA is currently developing a strategy to work with local and national product and service providers to discount products & services for our young adult members to help them save and protect their resources. We are feverishly developing and locating new, fresh, quality content in video, audio, text and gaming formats. We will continue to build partnerships with organizations where we can refer young adults to additional resources for quality content when we are unable to provide the materials ourselves. Finally, A4YA intends to generate awareness on policy issues that directly affect young adults, specifically issues affecting their finances and assets.

Our Current Programs include:

A4YA Life Skills Education
Colorado Asset Building Coalition
ColoradoSaves
Colorado Disability Economic Initiative