Youth summits bring diverse experts and speakers from a variety of backgrounds, including police chiefs, juvenile justice officials, college and university professors, members of Congress, lawyers, judges from various courts including the state supreme court, television personalities, and many others. The U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention's Youth for Justice Program has been promoting youth summits since 1995. A variety of models are used, varying in size from fewer than 50 students to over a thousand. Summits take place in a variety of venues, from school auditoriums and state courthouses, to churches and local TV stations. They cover a plethora of topics important to young people, such as substance abuse and gun safety.
Some summits modify the standard youth summit model to attract special audiences.
Other summits go beyond state borders to bring together even wider audiences. The Wyoming Youth Summit is a striking example of what can be accomplished through the collaboration of bar associations, law-related education programs, and students. The Wyoming Bar Association and Foundation have cooperated with the Wyoming LRE Council to develop highly effective youth summits that provide students in Wyoming with opportunities to meet one another and explore ways to prevent violence. In the course of the 1995 Summit, for example, the 75 students attending decided that Wyoming should pass legislation to create teen courts. The students visited the state capital to make presentations in support of teen courts to House and Senate Judiciary hearings.