CLASP Media Contact: Archana Pyati apyati@clasp.org

TYP Collaborative Media Contact: Nia West-Bey, nwestbey@typcollaborative.org

Washington, D.C., June 3, 2024—CLASP is pleased to announce the spinoff and launch of a new youth-focused nonprofit that builds upon two decades of youth policy work. The National Collaborative for Transformative Youth Policy (TYP Collaborative) is a new independent organization that will translate young people’s radical imagination and aspirations into transformative policy and systems change by building power with young people and their communities.

The TYP Collaborative will officially begin operating on July 1, 2024 and will be led by CLASP’s current director of youth policy, Dr. Nia West-Bey, who will be the new entity’s executive director.

“We are excited to carry forward our 20-year legacy at CLASP by bringing together policy, advocacy, and activism under one roof in service of transformational change,” said West-Bey. “We look forward to conducting policy analysis and advocacy in close collaborative partnership with young people and integrating organizing principles and strategies into policy work.”

The Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) has a proud history as an incubator for several prominent nonprofits. These include the National Women’s Law Center and Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, both of which are leaders in their fields of advocacy.

The TYP Collaborative will focus its work on the needs and leadership of young people who have been most impacted by oppressive systems of power, historic and on-going policy violence, and systemic marginalization. “By centering the experiences of young people, we will achieve more just systems and better outcomes for all young people,” said West-Bey.

“I’m proud to help Nia launch the TYP Collaborative, a new organization led by a Black woman with deep passion and commitment to organizing the next generation of youth advocates and community leaders to drive policy change,” said CLASP President and Executive Director Indivar Dutta-Gupta. “CLASP looks forward to working side-by-side with the TYP Collaborative. Partnering with groups who organize on the ground is core to our theory of change. And youth and young adults—especially many young people of color—continue to be sidelined in much of our nation’s public policies and will continue to be a focus of CLASP’s work toward economic justice.”

Kisha Bird, a former director of the youth policy team at CLASP and founding board member of the TYP Collaborative said: “I am very proud of over two decades of work by the youth policy team at CLASP.  It is an honor to serve as a founding board member for the National Collaborative for Transformative Youth Policy. I am confident that launching the TYP Collaborative is an essential next step on the journey to realizing youth justice in our communities.”

The CLASP youth team’s projects,  A New Deal for Youth (ND4Y) and Communities Collaborating to Reconnect Youth Network (CCRY), will also be moved as initiatives within the TYP Collaborative, which will also continue existing work on youth mental health and youth economic justice.

For more information, please visit www.typcollaborative.org.

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