Youth development programs prepare young people to meet the challenges of adolescence and adulthood through a structured, progressive series of activities and experiences which help them obtain social, emotional, ethical, physical, and cognitive competencies. They address the broader developmental assets all children and youth need (such as caring relationships, safe places and activities, health and mental health, marketable skills, opportunities for service and civic participation, and be spiritually grounded), in contrast to deficit-based approaches, which focus solely on youth problems.

What elements in young people's lives are most essential as they complete school, find viable employment, and make positive personal decisions? FHF youth development program (YDP) involves identifying these positive elements and seeking ways to make them available to all youth. Youth development represents a move away from focusing only on negative indicators (rates of teenage pregnancies or high school dropouts, for example) to how all youth can achieve positive outcomes in their lives.

Youth development program(s) help youth deal successfully with the challenges of adolescence and prepare them for the independence and responsibilities of being parents, workers, and citizens, by attempting to help youth develop "competencies.

These programs also:
Conduct activities with a primarily nonacademic focus;
Employ primarily active and experimental learning methods; and
Promote the competencies through group and one-to-one activities, which may include activities in youth clubs, sports and recreation, peer counseling and teaching, mentoring, arts, values education, leadership development, crime and delinquency prevention, youth employment as part of an educational program, community service or volunteerism, literacy, after school programs, career counseling, job skills training, drug abuse prevention, alcohol education, parenting skills activities, ethnic or cultural enrichment, tutoring, and academic enrichment.