Our plan
A group of D.C. residents came together in September 2007 because we believed the District’s educators were doing all they could, but that our students needed further support to ensure that they would learn how to express themselves through writing. Some of us had heard of the 826 writing centers around the country and believed that model worked. A few of us were teachers who knew first-hand the importance of writing skills and the challenges students faced. All of us were ready to bring about change for the young people we saw in our neighborhoods and homes. We believed that within every student there existed a brilliant writer. We wanted to help D.C.’s students improve their writing through workshops and one-on-one support.
What we did
We spoke with educators and directors of other educational and/or arts-related nonprofit organizations to understand how to build a writing center from scratch. We incorporated ourselves, established a website and assembled a board. We pitched our ideas to schools, government officials and anyone we believed would care. In late April, we hosted our first workshop at Politics & Prose. The first workshop had fewer than 10 students. In our first five months of workshops (in schools and elsewhere), we worked with 120 students in total. In November, we worked with over 200 students in that month alone. In the fall of 2008, we also launched weekly drop-in tutoring at a local library and began a year-long book publishing project with 30 students at Cardozo High. We received nonprofit status in late September and began actively fundraising through events, a Family & Friends campaign, grants and presentations to local businesses. This is an ongoing effort and we will open a physical center, with storefront, once we reach an appropriate level of funding. In the meantime, educators keep inviting us back, Cardozo students continue to show up an hour early to work with us on their book and D.C.’s students, in our workshops, improve their ability to write about their lives and the world around them.
Our results
Students, educators, families and interested people in the community have been positively impacted by our work. We’ve asked educators how they’d like us to complement their work and demonstrated a needed degree of support. We’ve brought students a new perspective on writing and some ideas, like ‘zines or persuasive essay writing along the lines of NPR’s “This I Believe.” For working parents, our weekly homework help at Shaw Library ensures that someone else is helping their children finish their assignments in the afternoon. For people in the community, we’ve shown them how to get involved and make a dream come alive day by day, student by student, word by word.
Julia
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Loren
As a former DC resident, I love that CLWC has worked so well at working with DC teachers, schools and neighborhoods--finding a way/place to help bring out the stories from within the heart of a community. Very smart. You are doing such good work, CLWC! I can't wait to read what comes out of your program.