Partner Programs
Overview
WriteGirl has presented hundreds of workshops at schools and community centers through fee-for-service partnerships that allow us to work with youth facing critical life challenges. The youth that we serve often start out reticent—and more often fearful—of writing. Our workshops can light up even the most reluctant writers, engaging them in writing topics that speak to their interests, experiences, and ambitions. After participation in WriteGirl, mentors, teachers, administrators, and parents all acknowledge dramatic improvements in teens’ ability to write, think critically, set goals and speak up.
Workshops are led by WriteGirl Teaching Artists and are presented in-person or online. Workshops are held weekly or periodically, typically for groups of 25 - 30 youth, ages 13 - 24. We offer workshops for girls / gender-expansive youth, as well as workshops for boys or co-ed groups under the name, “Bold Ink Writers.”
WriteGirl offers professional development workshops for teachers and youth leaders on trauma and healing-informed approaches in arts education. Read more about our Professional Development programs for teachers here.
“The thing that I loved about this workshop is that it opens up someone's inspiration. It’s a breakthrough.”
– Teen participant, Uganda
Goals
Workshops explore poetry, fiction, screenwriting, songwriting, creative nonfiction and other genres of creative writing.
Sessions are customized for each site and group we work with.
Workshops are interactive and incorporate breakout groups, music, video segments, games, special guest writers and more. Just to give a few examples, we may play a movie soundtrack to inspire storytelling; we may include drawing or map-making as a device for developing fictional characters; we may offer a self-quiz that assesses leadership styles. Workshops include self-care strategies and activities to engage the whole body and learn tools for personal wellness.
In addition to creative writing skill development, participants are introduced to a variety of creative professionals, who share their creative work as well as their experiences and career path.
Additional elements may include one-on-one mentoring, college entrance guidance, performance coaching, leadership development activities, career skills development, publishing of youth work and/or public reading opportunities.
“I enjoyed having a space to spark up my creative ideas and connect with friends again.”
– Teen participant
Los Angeles Region
Since 2004, WriteGirl has presented hundreds of workshops at schools, organizations, probation facilities, libraries and many other locations throughout the Los Angeles region. Here are just some of our past and current local partner programs:
Programming for critically underserved and under-resourced pregnant, parenting and incarcerated teen girls, in partnership with the Los Angeles County Office of Education at sites that have included Destiny Girls Academy, Azusa Community School, and the Road to Success Academy at Camp Scott and Camp Scudder
Series of workshops at Marc and Eva Stern Math and Science School, Sepulveda and Vista Middle Schools, New Village Girls Leadership Academy, Whittier Rose City High School
Several years of programming at Ramona Opportunity High School in Boyle Heights, serving critically underserved and under-resourced and pregnant/parenting teen girls.
A workshop series for underserved teen girls in South Los Angeles, in partnership with M.E.N.T.O.R.S., Inc.
Ongoing monthly workshops with a group of trans boys, nonbinary youth and girls in Altadena, CA
“Writing makes me feel like I can escape bad things that have happened, or (say) things that I am afraid to say out loud.”
– Teen participant
Arts for Healing and Justice Network (AHJN)
WriteGirl is a founding member of the Arts for Healing and Justice Network, which connects Los Angeles area organizations providing arts programming to incarcerated and systems-impacted youth. In the summer of 2015, we recruited and trained men writers for the first time to be mentors in our Bold Ink Writers program. WriteGirl is committed to partnering with AHJN to transform the juvenile justice system via trauma- and healing-informed educational approaches and strategic arts programming. Just to give a few examples, we have provided creative writing workshops for incarcerated youth at Los Padrinos in Downey, Central Juvenile Hall in Los Angeles, Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall in Sylmar, and Dorothy Kirby Center, a probation camp in Commerce. We also presented weekly workshops for re-entry and community youth as part of a diversion program with New Earth and also for youth at San Angelo Park Community Center.
“Because of this program, now I feel like I can write myself out of anything.”
– Teen participant
Programs Around the World
U.S.-BASED PROGRAMS
A series of hybrid in-person/online workshops for underserved high school girls in North Las Vegas through a partnership with Meow Wolf’s Omega Mart and T.U.L.I.P.S., a Las Vegas nonprofit serving teen girls.
A series of online creative writing workshops for co-ed youth who are members of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa in Bayfield, Wisconsin.
INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMS
Monthly online creative writing workshops for girls and young adults in Kampala, Uganda.
A six-week series of workshops for teens in Cameroon.
Guiding and mentoring a group of young women attending an international school in Singapore, helping them establish a new creative writing organization to provide writing workshops to teen girls in Tajikistan and across Central Asia.
A letter-writing project in which WriteGirl teens/alums have written to high-school aged girls in Afghanistan to help uplift them during this time when Afghan teen girls cannot attend school.
Sample Writing from Youth
We help guide teens in our partner programs to write about their emotions, the conditions they are facing and the world they experience around them. They write about their shoes, family, neighborhood and pop culture. We can laugh and enjoy Marcella’s story about her chickens, and feel the sorrow as Isabella writes about the daughter she misses while she is in a detention facility and far from home.
One participant, Mikayla, wrote this poem at Dorothy Kirby Center (for youth who are incarcerated), during one of our weekly workshops. Mikayla drew a Memory Tree and the word, "ALIVE," which inspired her to write this piece:
Selected writing from a participant in the WriteGirl international workshop series in Kampala, Uganda, published in the WriteGirl literary journal Lines & Breaks.
A Moment on Sixth Street
By Sharon N.
The road, crowded with boda bodas
crashing against each other.
No taxis or personal vehicles –
only giant-like trucks
honking at each other,
no traffic officers to control them.
The road full of potholes
filled with brown water from today’s rain.
Giant trucks splashing water on each other.
People on boda bodas
with brown porridge-like mud
on their feet and shoes.
Oh, what a road!
Partner Program Media Coverage
LA This Week/Channel 35
Video coverage of Bold Ink Writers workshop at Roosevelt Park in South LA
Chronicle of Social Change
Bring That Beat Back: The Power of Arts to Heal Youth in the Justice System
To inquire about partnering with WriteGirl to hold workshops at your school or organization, please contact WriteGirl at office@writegirl.org or 213-253-2655