Help 4,000 DC Youth Find Their Voice

Thanks to the donations provided through GlobalGiving, 826DC is continuing to work toward achieving the goals described in our project plan. We have hosted a number of field trips, held writing workshops, and provided drop-in after-school tutoring and writing help. With the help of a dedicated group of interns and volunteers, we are working hard to keep students engaged and excited through the end of the school year and summer.

Reading All Stars, our Saturday one-on-one reading program at Harriet Tubman Elementary School, is currently serving 60 students. Each week, students read with their tutors and receive help with reading comprehension and writing skills.

During the summer, we will hold three sessions of Summer Creative Writing Camps, which includes several different, fun writing activities and have each student take home a chapbook of all the great writing completed during the camp. In addition to daily writing exercises, students will work on a larger, individual piece that will be developed over the eight sessions to culminate in a multimedia story, narrated by the author. Starting in mid-July, we will also hold different Summer Weekend Workshops.  Every Saturday from July 13^th to August 17^th, students will work on a different writing activity, from helping students with writing a “how-to” guide to writing a short story for their pets. These different workshops help students with their language skills through creative means.

Also during the summer, we are collaborating with DCSCORES for our Who am I? photo workshop from July 23^rd to July 25^th. Who am I? is a writing and photography workshop with elementary school-aged students and takes place at Marie Reed Education Campus. For this project, students will develop their storytelling and narration skills while collaborating with a local professional photographer, Joshua Cogan. Students will take inspiration from fantasy (photoshopped) portraits of themselves and write stories to accompany the images. The final products, the pictures and stories, will be featured on our website.