Community Partnerships

Founded in 1998, Girls Write Now is New York’s first and only writing and mentoring organization for girls. Girls Write Now has been distinguished twice by the White House and the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities as one of the nation’s top after school programs, and has received several other awards. Through one-to-one mentoring, performances, and publications, Girls Write Now cultivates girls’ voices, making it a priority to incorporate practices from the most successful mentoring programs for underserved youth.

Kundiman is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to nurturing generations of writers and readers of Asian American literature. Kundiman creates a space where Asian Americans can explore, through art, the unique challenges that face the new and ever changing diaspora. We see the arts as a tool of empowerment, of education and liberation, of addressing proactively the legacy we will leave for our future.

Founded in 1991, Lambda Literary believes lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer literature is fundamental to the preservation of LGBTQ+ culture, and that LGBTQ+ lives are affirmed when their stories are written, published, and read. Lambda Literary was created to officially host the Lambda Literary Awards and the Lambda Book Report. In 2007, Lambda Literary founded its Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBT Voices, a residency designed to offer intensive and sophisticated instruction to selected writers over a carefully designed one-week period. In early 2010, Lambda Literary funded, staffed, and launched an online presence at LambdaLiterary.org, which celebrates, supports, serves, informs, entertains, and connects the whole of the brilliantly diverse community that creates and supports lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans literature.

Lamp Lifeboat Ladder is a global refugee resettlement program that supports survivors of torture, sexual violence, and trauma who have been forced to flee their homeland. They provide protection and holistic accompaniment to survivors, and work with them to identify and address their needs—this may be medical care, safe housing, access to education, or therapeutic support. Lamp Lifeboat Ladder accompany survivors from the point of flight to the point of safety and self-reliance in a safe country. Their program is shaped and guided by survivors themselves.

The Mindfulness and Positivity Project began in 2016 with two teachers, a mental health professional, and a shared vision to empower students to find peace and happiness in an increasingly complex world. Initially, they focused solely on students, but soon realized the efficacy of our program relied on healthy, supportive adults practicing with youth. When parents, teachers, coaches, and mentors are given the tools to model these behaviors, everyone is more equipped to lead a life of happiness and flourishing.

Their curriculum uses evidence-based mindfulness and positive psychology interventions to teach educators skills that buffer the body’s reaction to stress, enhance self-regulation, and improve the ability to examine thoughts and emotions. Participants develop simple strategies to enhance enjoyment, increase positive affect, generate self-compassion, regulate emotions, and experience what it means to truly feel at ease.

Ocean Culture Life (OCL) is dedicated to empowering a global community of ocean storytellers, advocates, and guardians to inspire, educate, and protect marine ecosystems. Aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 14, their initiatives promote conservation and deepen public engagement with the ocean. Since becoming a registered charity in Jersey in December 2022, OCL has hosted vibrant World Oceans Day celebrations and immersive educational workshops, fostering ocean literacy and collaboration with marine organisations. By celebrating the ocean through the power of storytelling, OCL inspires a new generation of ocean storytellers, advocates, and guardians committed to preserving our coastal environments for future generations.

The Octavia Project Summer Institute is a free program that uses speculative fiction as a lens through which to envision new futures and greater possibilities for our world. Bringing together young women, and trans, gender non-conforming, or non-binary youth ages 14-18, teens explore how the world around them is a series of choices that can be remade or replaced. By blending creative writing, art, science, and technology, our programming increases confidence and skills in a myriad of subjects while fostering leadership and community. As our inspiration and namesake is Octavia E. Butler, who broke barriers in writing and science fiction, we hope to encourage young people to imagine the realities and futures they would like to see.

PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect freedom of expression in the United States and worldwide. Founded on the heels of the Attica Prison uprising in 1971, PEN America’s Prison Writing Program believes in the restorative, rehabilitative, and transformative possibilities of writing. It supports free expression and encourages the use of the written word as a legitimate form of power. PEN America provides hundreds of imprisoned writers across the country with free writing resources, skilled mentors, and audiences for their work. The organization strives toward an increasingly integrative approach, aiming to amplify the voices and writing of imprisoned people to beyond the silo of prison and identity of prisoner.

The Other Side Academy is a 501(c)(3) public non-profit organization where criminals, homeless and substance abusers can change their lives, free of charge. Their comprehensive two-year residential program accompanied with a 6-month transitional program offers vocational training, education, peer counseling, mentoring/leadership training and transitional services.

The Other Side Academy is a “classic therapeutic community.” It is based on one of the most researched and effective models for helping those with long histories of addiction and criminal behavior over the past 70 years. In a therapeutic community, the powerful influence of experienced peers is employed in place of therapists or doctors who don’t share the same life experience as our students.