YMTF aims to reduce the high school student drop out rate through meaningful conversations about the importance of education in our every day lives.

Orange County Youth Motivation Task Force is a partnership of local companies and high schools. The primary goal of YMTF is to reduce the high school student drop out rate. To achieve this goal, YMTF brings local business people into the classroom to talk about their jobs, what their companies do, the role education has had in their lives, but most importantly we discuss the cost-of-living and value-of-education statistics which have been collected by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. With charts and diagrams we show the students how education can make a difference in their quality of living for the rest of their lives.

YMTF was established in 1976 and has made more than 500 high school visitations (more YMTF statistics). For the 2009-2010 School Year, 90 volunteers made 235 visits to 157 Classrooms and 4,950 Students at 13 schools and YMTF awarded three $2,000 scholarships to graduating seniors.

Volunteering is an extremely gratifying experience as illustrated by one volunteer's note that "A few students personally thanked me for taking the time out of my day to speak to them." (more volunteer comments) Student feedback like "Now I really wanna finish high school." make the effort worth every minute (more student feedback).