By Jamie-Rose Edwards | Executive Director: Programs
Wow! What an incredible camp YOU helped to create! Thank you for giving over 25 young women the opportunity to work with professional Hedgebrook Writers at the Whidbey Institue last August. With your support, these powerful girls attended the highest quality creative writing and performance workshops with writers Shontina Vernon, Karen Finneyfrock, Rebecca Brown, and Mayda Del Valle. For full bios of these amazing writers, please click here. The young women found their voices, expanded their writing abilities, gained the confidence to perform in front of audiences of over 200, and formed positive relationships with peers and adult mentors.
The participants emerged from the camp with a transformed relationships to themselves, each other and the writen word. As one young woman, Nimco, explained: "This camp really pushed me out of my comfort zone. It was my first time camping, being away from all my friends, being with people of different cultures and religions, and I didn't even like writing...I was pretty intimidated to go! However, this camp taught me to LOVE writing. Now that I am back at school, my teachers are so impressed by how my writing has improved and now I journal every day for FUN! I am so grateful I had the opportunity to attend Y-WE Write!"
9 out of 10 Y-WE girls need full scholarships in order to attend our life-changing programs so your generous contributions to our scholarship fund really do make all the different to girls like Nimco. If you'd like to continue to make our programs possible, please visit Y-WE's GlobalGiving page. We still have over $7200 to raise before the end of the year in order to assure that all 400 young women in need will be able to participate in 2015.
The icing on the cake of this incredible camp was a surprise visit this fall from celebrity writer and actress Lena Dunham! Lena learned about our Y-WE Write camp and thus selcted Y-WE as her Seattle partner organization on her "Not that Kind of Girl" book tour. She and her sister Grace selected 10 Y-WE Write Camp Participants for an intimate round-table discussion in our tiny office. She brought 2 dozen doughnuts, copies of her fantastic memouir, warm hugs, and ton of inspiration. She also convinced HBO to give Y-WE a $5000 grant to help fuel the future of the Y-WE Write Camp! Lena's visit sparked some beautiful writing from the girls. Here's one sample poem that camp participant, Emnet, wrote about her sister Tsige:
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