Something To Write Home About

From the outside, it looks like a weirdo San Francisco storefront. From the inside, it looks like a weirdo retail Pirate Supply store, selling planks by the foot, peg legs for every occasion, eye patches for the fashion-forward sea rover. Take a few steps deeper into the space, and you'll see things are always much more that what meets the patch-covered eye.

Pictured above is 826 Valencia, the model writing center founded by Dave Eggers back in 2002. What began as an idea to merge communities of journalists, editors and writers with kids in need of help with their reading and writing, has turned into another animal altogether. When Eggers decided to provide a communal space for his writer friends, he invited local kids to come into the space each afternoon for help with school assignments.

After learning that the space was in a retail only zone, he decided to create a "store" up front to justify their occupancy. What started as a joke, turned into a way to make the space more attractive to the kids who would eventually come in droves to learn to love the written word.

The model has now been replicated here and here and here. It's run and funded by locals who simply love and believe in kids.

I highly recommend a viewing of Eggers at a TED conference here, as he explains his concept. If nothing else, read and take to heart his final words, his plea for volunteers to catch his vision:

It can be fun. It needn’t be sterile. It needn’t be bureaucratically unteneble. You can use the skills you have. The schools need you. The teachers need you. The students and parents need you. They need your actual person, your physical personhood and your open minds and your open ears and boundless compassion, sitting next to them, listening and nodding and asking questions for hours at a time. Some of these kids just don’t plain know how good they are, how smart, and how much they have to say. You can tell them. You can shine that light on them, one human interaction at a time. So, we hope you’ll join us.

And, dear Birmingham residents, you can. If you're interested in getting in on our very own Woodlawn-based version, read more here and email Chip Brantley at chip.brantley@gmail.com. While it's still in beginning stages locally, there are ways to get involved today, tomorrow, the next day. There are ways your physical personhood can speak light into a kids present and future.