Innovation of the Week

San Francisco's only independent Pirate Supply store -- offering eye patches, flags, mops, and glass eyes -- is actually the home of 826 Valencia, founded by author Dave Eggers and educator Nínive Calegari, and is the first chapter of what has become a national movement of writing centers for neighborhood children run by volunteer tutors.

826 National is the umbrella organization that coordinates the adaptation of 826's tutoring and mentorship model in other cities and includes a family of eight chapter writing centers across the country dedicated to helping students, ages 6-18, with expository and creative writing.

Each 826 chapter offers after-school tutoring, workshops, field trips and in-schools programs, all free of charge, for local children, classes, and schools.

Most students, of all skill levels and interests, live within walking distance from their local writing center and like 826 Valencia, each center is accompanied by a unique retail storefront, which draw in locals and give passersby a reason to walk in and see what's going on.

The Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co. in New York sells capes and grappling hooks.The Greenwood Space Travel Supply Company in Seattle outfits adventurers and rocket scientists, and in Chicago, The Boring Store sells espionage miscellany. All proceeds go directly to each chapter and the curious contents for sale are attributed to sparking the creative spirits of each student.

Most recently, 826 National named Gerald Richards as its new Chief Executive Officer. "Gerald’s experience and expertise is an eerily perfect fit for 826," says co-founder Dave Eggers. "He not only has done major fundraising and planning at other major nonprofits, but he has an MFA in fiction."

According to Richards, "I think the most innovative aspect of 826 National is our publications. We allow students to express themselves and then have a takeaway example of their creativity in print."

Each program is aimed to help students express their ideas creatively, effectively, and confidently in his or her own creative voice, and because 826 believes that the quality of student work is greatly enhanced when it’s shared with an authentic audience, each year 826 publishes anthologies of student writing which are professionally produced.

Other publications include 826 Quarterly, student newspapers and 'zines. One project compiled student letters written to president Obama and are now part of the published book called Thanks and Have Fun Running the Country. Annually, 826 orchestrates the Young Authors' Books series in which 826 partners with local public high schools. With student and teacher input, a theme for the series is agreed on and the students begin to write on that topic. After eight, nine, or ten drafts, volunteers say, student writing improves dramatically. Each piece is reviewed by a student editorial board and finally, the writing culminates in high-quality hardback and paperback books that the students can call their own.

Research has proven that 35-40 hours per year of directed, one-on-one, student-to-volunteer mentoring can raise a student’s grade one letter higher. In some cases, volunteers are working for two hours with a student who has never in their life spent two hours focusing on their writing on a one-on-one basis. 826 National’s work is based on the understanding that great leaps in learning can happen with one-on-one attention, and that strong writing skills are fundamental to future success.

"Our volunteers are essential to the success of 826. Volunteering allows adults the opportunity to mentor, to become the person in a student’s life for whom they gather support from and learn from. Engaging in the lives of the young provides a transformative and circular experience," says Richards.

Educators have joined 826 National to pursue the same goals in their local classrooms and volunteer tutors come from all fields—they are college students, published authors, law professors, documentary filmmakers, magazine founders—but all have one thing in common: they love to help students learn.

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It is this essential social sector, in collaboration with its partners in the private and public sectors, that changes lives and builds a society of healthy children, strong families, decent housing, good schools, work that dignifies, all embraced by the diverse, inclusive, cohesive community that cares about all of its people.