Association of Young Leaders

Association of Young Leaders | History

AYL birthday – December 14, 1992.
Place of birth – testing fields of the Special Research Bureau of the Moscow Power Engineering Institute. On that particular day 60 young people from Moscow and Magnitogorsk came together in a small hotel to take part in the Constituent Conference to establish a new youth organization. But our history started much earlier and there were a lot of nice people who greatly assisted our formation.

In 1988 a group of American students from California Association of Student Councils (CASC) wrote letters to the USA and the USSR presidents, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. These letters contained an appeal for peace between the two countries and nations, for mutual understanding between people. The result of this appeal was quite surprising even for the authors; President Gorbachev invited them to the Kremlin. Besides official meetings and events, young people from the United States introduced their program to students of one of the Moscow schools. That’s how the youth leadership training program came to Russia.

Our partnership with CASC is still very strong, though now we cooperate as equal partners in the development of leadership programs in the world.

The work of AYL in Russia is, first of all, organization and facilitation of leadership trainings as well as development of the programs participating in which young people could apply their leadership skills for the benefit of the society.

The milestones of our history:

1993 – 1996

Joint project with California Association of Student Councils under support of the US Information Agency. We managed not only to get acquainted to the CASC activities more profoundly but also to start the activities of ours in different regions of Russia.

1993

AYL’s first regional conference held in Murmansk.
First Staff Development Conference.

1994

Conference in Alma-Ata. We start developing leadership program in other countries.
AYL’s first volunteering project.

1995

Thanks to the support of the Academician Velikhov, AYL moved to the new office, which we use nowadays as well.

1996

AYL Internet Website.
AYL received Soros grant for carrying out leadership trainings.

1997

Association successfully re-registered as an Interregional non-profit organization.
AYL received grant from the Russian government.
AYL organizes a conference in Central Asia for young people from Russia, Kazakhstan, Kirgizia, Tadzhikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

1998

Organization of an international forum “Youth in Community Service”.
Beginning of the “Motherland” project.

1999

Renovation of AYL – CASC exchanges.
AYL is included in the Federal Register of non-profit and youth organizations supported by the State.

2001

AYL starts its work in the Northern Caucasus region within the frames of “Youth in the action” project under support of Ford Foundation.

2002

Carrying out the “Youth Initiatives in Small Towns” project. Hundreds of young people from small towns of Russia took part in the project.
AYL meets the representatives of the University of Central Lancashire (Great Britain), which becomes our constant partner.

2003

AYL and CASC carry out the «Youth energy for the future» joint project- leadership trainings for Japanese youth carried out together with ITER-project and Aomori prefecture, Japan.
AYL organizes the first leadership conference in Great Britain.

These are the main milestones of our not so very long history, which is nowadays being created by thousands of young people who proudly call themselves AYL members.

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Photos from our conferences!