The Youth Leadership Camp (YLC) is a summer camp for deaf teenagers sponsored by the National Association of the Deaf (NAD) and Junior NAD. The project was first conceived by Junior NAD administrators Gary Olsen and Frank Turk in 1969, as a way of identifying and developing future leaders among deaf high schoolers, and assisting them in their personal development.

The original YLC was a four-week program held in 1969 at Pine Lake Camp in Stroudsburg, PA, with Olsen as camp director. The campers consisted of 64 freshman and sophomore Junior NAD members recruited from deaf schools around the country.

After the first year, Turk and Donald Padden arranged the purchase of Swan Lake Lodge in Pengilly, MN, which served as YLC’s home from 1970 to 1989 (the years mostly covered by these records).

In Pengilly, the YLC ran two four-week sessions each summer. Besides traditional camp activities such as sports, arts and crafts, and nature exploration, the YLC involved training in leadership, courses on deaf history, and character- and team-building exercises. “Fireside chats” with adult deaf leaders were also a regular part of the YLC program. During this period, YLC eligibility was expanded to accept students from non-deaf schools, as well as those who were not members of the Junior NAD.

YLC left Swan Lake Lodge after 1989 when the lodge failed to meet health and safety regulations. Since then, YLC has mostly been held at the deaf-owned Camp Taloali in Oregon, although sessions have also been held in South Dakota and Florida.