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Do A Good Thing
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Photo | Mark Stehle
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WRITE STUFF: Tim Whitaker and Rachel Loeper work with 11-year-old Saudia Islam.
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This fall, we featured Tim Whitaker's Mighty Writers in our Big Vision CP Choice issue.
Tim Whitaker spent his first few years out of college teaching in North Philly. The experience stuck with him, even as he moved on to Philadelphia Weekly, where he spent more than a decade in the editor's chair. A few years back, that gig stopped being fun and he felt the need to reinvent himself. Helping kids discover the joy of writing was a natural fit.
Thus the idea for Mighty Writers, a nonprofit after-school program modeled after Dave Eggers' 826 Valencia project, was born. Their first location opened July 5 of this year at the 1501 Christian St. storefront that once housed an Obama for President operation. There, executive director Whitaker (who left the Weekly in November 2008), program director Rachel Loeper and lots of volunteers guide 45 enrolled students through hands-on writing workshops. The program's so popular that there's already a 15-student waiting list — a situation Whitaker's looking to ameliorate with a bigger space right quick. He also hopes to open locations in North and West Philly in the next 18 months.
Mighty Writers is looking to make good on that hope and asks that you help them make it so.
In his e-mail asking for support, Whitaker said, "Six months into our program, we're on track to serve 50 Philadelphia kids in our South Philadelphia afterschool program and more than 500 a year in our writing workshops."
But literacy is a crisis in the city and, according to Whitaker, "For Mighty Writers to have a demonstrable impact, we need to grow the program citywide. Your contribution can help us get there in 2010."
"Good writing, in this age of email, texting and Twitter, is a forgotten skill," says Whitaker. "In many Philadelphia schools writing takes a deep backseat to the pressure to improve standardized test scores."
We can't underscore this enough. We know from experience that teaching a kid to write is teaching a kid to think. Can you dig deep and make a donation to an organization devoted to helping kids learn to write?
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