NINE semi-finalists want your vote!
Come to treasure&bond during the month of April and vote for the organization that you think we should partner with next.
Get to Know: Girls Write Now
Organizational Overview
Distinguished as one of the top 15 after-school arts and culture programs in the nation by The President’s Committee on Arts & Humanities, Girls Write Now (GWN) is the first organization in the United States with a writing/mentoring model exclusively for girls. From young women exploring writing to seasoned professionals practicing their craft every day, Girls Write Now is a community of women writers dedicated to providing the guidance, support and opportunities for high-school girls to develop their creative, independent voices, and write their way to a better future. GWN has an incredibly rich history of delivering successful, premium programming free of cost to an audience that is overwhelmingly low-income and of color. For nearly fifteen years, we have built a record of achievement and innovation that has been recognized twice by the White House, and by The New York Times, NBC Nightly News, the MacArthur Foundation, and global branding firm Siegel+Gale. This January, we were honored by Youth, I.N.C. as one of the three most enterprising and innovative nonprofits improving the lives of New York City youth.
The Mentoring Program
Through our signature Mentoring Program, GWN matches bright, creative teen girl writers with professional women writers, who serve as their mentors for an intensive relationship that lasts a minimum of one year. Each mentor-mentee pair meets for 1-3 hours each week, focusing on writing, revising, and editing, while building an intimate bond. Our full group of mentees and mentors meets monthly for a series of communal, inter-generational workshops that provide structure to the program. Our annually-refreshed genre-based workshops guide the curriculum and drive the creation of mentees’ developmental writing portfolios, as they delve deeply into six literary genres: fiction, poetry, memoir, journalism, play- or screen-writing, and a “wild card”. Recent writing workshops have focused on sketch comedy, food writing, crime fiction, romantic comedies, and adaptations. Our program year culminates with CHAPTERS, a series of spring readings open to the public, showcasing the best original work from each girl in the program. At our final reading, we debut our annual Anthology, comprised of work by all mentor and mentee participants—for most of our teens, their first publication.
Through this core program, we seek to address a myriad of interconnected, systemic, gender-based issues, including women’s voices being underrepresented in the public sphere, disparity in the classroom, lack of visible role models for women writers (especially minority women), and the need for young women to be provided with leadership opportunities. Our rigorous enrollment process for mentees and mentors, highly-structured curriculum, and integrated programmatic supports have scaffolded impressive accomplishments: uncommonly high retention rates, annual successes at the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, and yearly program evaluations that show significant gains in mentees’ self-expression, editing ability, and public speaking skills. In a city where 40% of students fail to graduate high school on time and only 21% are deemed college-ready at graduation, GWN is proud to report that 100% of our seniors graduate and move on to college – bringing with them awards, scholarships, a new sense of confidence and new skills.
You have the power to help Girls Write Now become one of our new beneficiaries by coming in store and voting!
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