Mission

Girls Write Now (GWN) is the first organization in the United States, and the only one on the East coast, to combine mentoring and writing instruction within the context of all-girl programming.  Since 1998, we have given more than 3,500 at-risk girls from New York City’s under-funded public high schools access to a supportive mentoring relationship, a safe space to share ideas, and an intergenerational writing community. Our rigorous selection process, respect for each relationship’s singularity, and integrated supports have led to rich, revelatory mentee writing across a variety of genres, and to a signal set of accomplishments. We see over 90% retention rates within the year, and return rates for non-seniors of 80%.  While half of New York City’s youth fail to complete high school, 100% of GWN’s seniors graduate and move on to college – bringing with them awards, scholarships, a new sense of confidence and new skills. Last April, our mentee class was awarded 27 Gold and Silver Keys from the Scholastic Arts and Writing Awards – more than double last year’s 13 keys – and three National Gold Medals. Girls Write Now has been featured in The New York Times, NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, and distinguished by the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities as one of the top 15 after-school arts and culture programs in the nation.

The Need for Girls Write Now
The truth is, there are a lot of girls’ programs out there. There are also a lot of writing programs. But there’s only one Girls Write Now, combining youth mentoring and a rigorous creative-writing curriculum within the context of fun, all-girl programming. Founded in 1998 by women writers just a few years older than the girls they sought to serve, Girls Write Now—the first organization to ever present this combination of powerful services—has to date empowered nearly 6,000 women writers, including more than 3,500 underserved or at-risk girls from New York City’s public high schools.

Our community of dedicated mentors and volunteers includes sophisticated female novelists, poets, novelists, playwrights, journalists, essayists, and educators who work for publications and institutions such as The New York Times, The Village Voice, Essence magazine, McGraw-Hill, Simon & Schuster, and Columbia University—and who stand as shining, real-life examples to our girls of exactly who you can be as a woman, as a writer, and as a professional. Providing strong women role models in leadership roles is critical to young women envisioning themselves as leaders and becoming leaders. Girls Write Now enables and empowers the next generation of women writers through the experience of creativity as a communal enterprise. The secret to our girls’ success—and their 100 percent college acceptance rate—is the unique combination of girls, writing, and mentoring.

The Girls in Girls Write Now
Though we’re breaking new ground every day, there’s still much work to do: Women—especially minority women—are underrepresented in leadership positions within most fields. Sadly, they’re also undereducated and underpaid. In New York State, women are more likely to be poor today than they were in 1989.ii Fostering girls’ education and building their self-esteem is critical to breaking the cycle: 88 percent of women who finish their college degree move permanently out of poverty.iii

We also need more women’s voices in the public discourse. Today, women writers are still a minority: A 2007 study found that only 15 percent of directors, producers, writers, cinematographers, and editors on top-grossing films in the U.S. were women; according to Editor & Publisher, a scant one in four opinion columnists at the largest syndicates are women.

And while the teen years are a time of haywire hormones, they’re also a time of intellectual awakening. As girls explore the world around them, they’ll encounter peer pressure, sexism, and racism—all factors that can steadily erode self-trust and affect decision-making. A safe arena for academic and personal development is critical.

In co-ed settings, girls often do not receive the same attention that boys do.iv This disparity impacts girls’ academic performance, hinders their ability to form friendships, and affects their comfort level when discussing adolescent issues.v A successful, safe, girls-only space can create time and opportunities, so that each girl is taken seriously for who she is and who she will become.

The Importance of Literacy-based After-school Programming
• New York City's public school system is one of the nation's largest, enrolling more than one million children—almost half of who will not graduate high school on time.vi

• Only 31 percent of students in New York were found to have proficient writing skills, according to a recent test from the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

• Across the U.S., arts programs have been cut from most public schools as their focus narrows to curriculum standardization to improve test scores; here in New York City, in-school writing programs are virtually non-existent.

• High school students involved in after-school programs are at least 5 to 10 percent more likely to earn As or Bs than students who are not involved in this type of extracurricular enrichment. They also say they love school or like school a lot, believe that being a good student is important, and plan on continuing their education after graduation.vii

• More than 17 percent of foreign-born students and more than 11 percent of U.S. born children of immigrants drop out of high school.viii Literacy-based programming enables non-native English speakers to extend their in-school English lessons

Mentoring Makes the Difference
Mentoring is an intentional relationship that often starts out contrived and artificial, and becomes more natural and meaningful as it progresses. You might immediately ‘click,’ or you might find it terribly awkward--either way it is okay because you and your mentee have a focused purpose.

The word “mentor” comes from the Greek for ”steadfast” and “enduring.” The benefits of this unique relationship are well documented, impacting many parts of a girl’s life:

• Having an adult mentor (or mentors) is the most significant, indisputable factor in keeping teenagers off the streets and helping them reach college and overcome poverty. Yet one third of teens say they don’t have someone outside of the family to confide in.

• Participants in mentoring programs similar to Girls Write Now’s are 46 percent less likely than their counterparts to initiate drug use and 27 percent less likely to initiate alcohol use.ix

• Mentoring also improves students’ relationships with parents, school value, scholastic abilities, grades, and attendance rates.