An update from TEDster Holly Jones on 826DC...

In February, TED Prize winner Dave Eggers and I met with 40 TEDsters in Long Beach. We shared our vision for 826DC, the newest member of Ninive Calegari and Dave’s 826 National family. 826DC had first gone into schools two years before when a handful of DC residents and I, inspired by the 826 model, decided our city needed the same support. By early 2010, we had hundreds of volunteers, students and educators engaged. We’d been in schools and published books. But 826DC didn’t yet have a permanent home.

We committed to opening for the 2010-2011 school year and TEDsters committed the support and resources that have helped make this possible. Many in the TED community have remained engaged in the months since as we took the challenging, but always fun, steps toward opening. For those of you who’ve visited one of the amazing 826 centers and wondered how they got their start, here’s how one city made it happen with your support:

How To Open 826DC in Six “Easy” Steps

1) Convince the only Columbia Heights landlord with 2,500 square feet of storefront space that 826DC deserves it more than the for-profit retail chain offering to pay more. Tactics may include a) sharing the link to Dave’s very popular TED Prize talk, b) assuring him that 500+ volunteers, the educators in 36 DC schools and the many students we’ve helped can’t be wrong, and c) offering to enroll him, free of charge, in our next annual March Moustache-a-thon. In every future Moustache-a-thon. At any 826 writing center anywhere.

2) Pick a theme that doesn’t involve the pirates, superheroes, spies – Spies! So perfect for DC! – and time travel marts already featured at other 826 centers. Wander the city and ask what defines us. Wonky bureaucrats and dubious politicos do not a vibrant 826DC make, so you keep wandering. Museums everywhere you turn. What if 826DC opened its very own Museum of Unnatural History, close to the homes and schools of our young people?

3) Develop the design by having 826DC curators, Minh Le and Oliver Uberti, wander the Museum of Natural History with Dave. Consider the kids enjoying the hole at the base of the elephant stand more than the elephant itself, and the spark that will become 826DC’s cave forms. Take a few Tuesdays. No, take a few months of Tuesdays with the curators and a superstar team of volunteers, and you’ll have products including Unicorn Burps, Koala Containment Units (they’re not as cute as you think they are) and Mega Sand, for when the regular stuff just won’t do.

4) Assemble a team of construction gurus, tell them our capital fund is $45,000 and watch them mobilize the D.C. business community to cover the remaining $100,000 through donated materials, services and bones. Skeletons, build-your-own-specimen stations and sandboxes require lots of bones.

5) Call on volunteers to bottle Natural Selection Supplements and label the Formal Dehyde and Semi-Formal Dehyde. Look away if they eat more Supplements (Milk Duds) than they pour. It’s 2:00 a.m. The pizza’s long gone.

6) Throw a preview party, invite the neighbors and watch their reaction to 826DC. Give them a few minutes to read the Unnatural Rules & Regulations and realize that “No dilly-dallying” is a joke. This is DC. We didn’t get a reputation for wonkiness by telling jokes all day long. When they start to laugh, welcome them to 826DC.

Our doors are nearly open. While we already lead in-school workshops, drop-in tutoring begins in the space October 26th. If you find yourself in DC on October 23, please come to our Welcome-to-the-Neighborhood event. If not, I’ll post pictures and an update shortly thereafter, and hope you’ll also follow us at www.826dc.org. 826DC’s finally got a home and it’s just as much TED’s as it is that of DC’s students, educators and volunteers.

Photos by Julia Smith

During TED2010, TED Prize winner Dave Eggers co-hosted a lunch with TEDster’s Rick Smolan and Holly Jones. After learning of Dave’s newest writing center, 826DC, several attendees rallied to show their support for the same cause and work that so inspired the TED community 2 years ago during Dave’s TED talk. They brainstormed with him about ways to grow the support base faster. They offered contacts in design and construction firms to help build the physical center that will house 826DC from this summer. They also offered donations to help cover the upfront construction and rent for the center so that 826DC and the District students can enter the 2010-2011 school year with a full schedule of tutoring and workshops. Wil Shipley and Dean Ornish offered challenge grants totalling $15,000 that they would donate if matching funds were raised within 48 hours. The TED community needed just 24 hours to raise the $15,000 match. Paul Simon then generously donated $15,000 and 826DC is now halfway to the funds needed to open its doors this July!

If you’d like to hear more about 826DC, please email Holly Jones, holly@826dc.org. Dave, Holly and the 826 family thank everyone for their support and look forward to welcoming you to the center this summer.

Congratulations to Holly Jones and 826DC, the newest incorporated chapter of 826. TED Prize winner Dave Eggers co-founded the nonprofit tutoring, writing, and publishing organization in San Francisco and it has since expanded to 8 cities throughout the country.

Holly attended TED Palm Springs last year and has been working with a number of people from the TED community to realize her dream of incorporating an 826 Chapter in Washington. Operating up until now as Capitol Letters, the organization has been running programs in local public schools and is planning on opening a physical tutoring center next summer.

The launch of 826DC took place last week in the home of Carol Blue and Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens, master of ceremonies for the evening, set the stage for impassioned readings by some of the country’s best literary minds. Christopher Buckley opened with a reading from his memoir Losing Mom and Pup, followed by Azar Nafisi (author of Reading Lolita in Tehran) and George Pelecanos (The Wire, The Turnaround). Dave Eggers shared his compelling vision for the founding of 826, the vital role 826DC plays in the lives of District students and the need for stakeholders to continue to pledge their support. Nearly $10,000 was raised to help fund the opening of 826DC’s first home.

Thank you to all from the TED community who’ve supported Holly. If you’d like to become involved please visit www.826DC.org.

Fast Company magazine has a great case study of Once Upon a School which gives a glimpse behind the making of a TED Prize wish.  Profiling the amazing work of TED Prize hero Maria Giudice and her colleagues at Hot Studio, the study looks at their work on Dave Eggers’ wish – from design concept to final execution of the Once Upon a School website.

Hot Studio CEO and founder Maria Giudice…knew the difficulties of working within a volunteer-based organization: “How do you create something that’s big enough to move the conversation forward a little bit, but won’t overwhelm them to manage?” Her team worked closely with Eggers to explore the viability of his many ideas, from a volunteer-matching service to a locator that would direct users to a neighborhood school. Since the project needed to be monitored through the existing administration of the 826 non-profit, the designers knew the concept had to be appropriately-sized for existing conditions, but scalable if more resources were found.  With Eggers, Hot Studio’s designers decided on a solution: A highly-visual Web site that would be a powerful way to share volunteers’ stories of working one-on-one in schools.

We are so excited to have Hot Studio’s work celebrated in this way and appreciate their dedication to the TED Prize, Dave Eggers’ wish and Once Upon a School.

And don’t forget, the new school year is about to begin. Go out, volunteer and add your story here.

First Lady Michelle Obama recently kicked off the “Summer of Service” initiative to promote volunteerism this summer.  Serve.gov has some great ideas and toolkits. One we particularly like provides you with the basic steps to help start a reading program from scratch, recruit a team, organize your group, and make an impact this summer.   Did you know that if a young person reads only five books over the summer, the effect is potentially large enough to prevent a decline in reading achievement scores from the spring to the fall?

So get reading and help fulfill Dave Eggers’ TED Prize wish by posting your story on OnceUponASchool.org.

So goes the tag line for Spells Writing Center in Philly.  Inspired by Dave Eggers’ 826 Valencia, Spells will follow a similar model as 826.  Volunteers will work with 6 to 18 year olds on creative and expository forms of writing. The space will have a madcap retail store in the front (the “Wiz-mart”) with the tutoring space in back.

In their own words…

Our committed group of volunteers is working to make Spells an enchanting space, full of learning, creativity, and lots of fun! With drop-in tutoring, imaginative class field-trips, a wide selection of writing workshops, and a charming storefront, Spells will truly be a magical center, where kids from around the city develop their voice, skills, and self-esteem.

While the physical center won’t open until September 2010, many activities are planned for the intervening period of time.  You can follow the center’s development on their site or on twitter.

Visit Echo Park Time Travel Mart and 826LA courtesy of KCET‘s “Postcards from SoCal”.

Poketo + 826LA Collaboration – When Wallets Eat Words from Poketo on Vimeo.

Celebrating the work of artists and students alike, Poketo teamed up with 826LA to create a special series of artist wallets. 826LA held a writing workshop entitled When Wallets Eat Words, led by screenwriter James Ponsoldt where 826LA students crafted short stories to line the inside of Poketo’s artist wallets. Each wallet was then illustrated with a Poketo artists’ interpretations of the stories.  The artists chosen to illustrate the stories include Tim Biskup, Esther Pearl Watson, Mark Todd, Martha Rich, John Pham, Rama Hughes, Christine Castro, Leah Chun, Chris Bettig, and Keith Knueven.

There are still wallets available. Buy them here or here. Proceeds support 826LA programming.

Next month 826 Valencia and 826 Valencia and Qigo will host an intimate evening with musician Jill Sobule. All proceeds will benefit 826 Valencia’s free student programming.  Donors will receive a Qigo key, which will allow them to access exclusive Jill Sobule material from her new album before it is released, plus video clips, excerpts of student writing and more information about 826 Valencia’s programming.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

826 Valencia

San Francisco

6:30 PM — drinks

7:30 PM — concert

$100 minimum donation

Limited to 75 people

Go here to donate and get a ticket for the concert.

For further information, or to book tickets offline, please contact Eugenie Howard-Johnston.
Email: eugenie@826valencia.org
Tel: 1-415-642-5905 x210

The TED Prize team loves to hear from people around the world who have been inspired by Dave Egger’s wish. Although hundreds of stories are up on the site, we hope to share feedback from users on the TED Prize blog as well.

Here is a note from Martin Jorgensen:

Just watched the Dave Eggers Ted Talk, and was wowed and inspired.

I build educational tools online in my spare time (while I study education, take care of 2 girls, work etc) … actually, I don’t have a lot of spare time.

I do have 2 websites that I feel may be of some benefit to the students and centers features on Dave’s talk.

www.lightningbug.com.au – a resource introducing narrative to young adults. It’s intended to get kids excited about story, to help them understand that it’s accessible, fun, and free … just like the website!

www.thedigitalnarrative.com – a resource for teachers, encouraging them to build stories using the web2 tools freely available to them online in order to build young adult literacy.

I fund these resources myself, and there’s no advertising or inappropriate material on them. I built them to be used in schools by students and teachers.

I’m hopeful that some of the kids, parents and educators coming into your centers will gain some benefit from using them, and hope that you may suggest them as a resource.