Country of Residence
United States
Age
13
Project title
Creative Righters
Project Summary: Describe your project in one sentence
Find your voice. Tell your story. Change the world. Many kids today are afraid to tell their stories. Creative Righters promotes children's literacy by helping kids develop their writing skills so they can be used as powerful tools to improve their communities. Creative Righters has mentored & published hundreds of underserved young writers (creativerighters.org), including young patients at children’s hospitals, helping them overcome the stress of their treatments through storytelling.
Website URL(s) or social media handles.
www.creativerighters.org | www.instagram.com/creativerighters/
Project Category
My project is an existing project that I started
Project Stage
Pilot-Stage (We’ve tried an activity or two)
Founding Story: What was the spark that led you to start your project? What was the "Aha!" moment that led you to get started and see the potential for this to succeed?
“My writing SUCKS, Lottie. I’m not doing it.” I was 10 when I got my dream job: Lead Editor of my school paper. But being Editor had more than a few bumps. No one wanted to write for me. “Writing’s boring, Lottie. Just use AI for your articles.” My blood went cold when I heard this. Kids told me awesome stories every day at lunch. But when I asked them to write them down, they refused. I love a good story. It’s in my blood. 40 years ago, my family barely escaped the Vietnam War alive. In Vietnam, speaking up against injustice could lead to prison, or worse. My family fought for human rights there and lost their freedom. It’s a story my grandparents were never able to tell. So I get angry that kids today choose to give up their own voices, when so many, like my grandparents, had it taken away from them with violence. So, I built Creative Righters (creativerighters.org) to help shy kids defeat their writing fears. For 3 years now, I’ve helped hundreds of young writers tell amazing stories and share them with the world. Nothing feels better than reading e-mail I get from young students, thanking me because they never thought anyone would care about their stories. Kids complain about writing. But I know the truth now. They secretly like it. They just need some support and a safe place to publish. This is why I made Creative Righters.
The Problem: What problem are you helping to solve? Why does it matter to you and your community?
Kids (ages 5-18) today struggle with reading and writing. Over 70% of American 4th graders read below their grade level. Nearly 75% of American 8th graders are writing below acceptable levels, according to the National Assessment Governing Board of Education. Now that AI has become a common tool for students, young students are writing less than ever before. The damage goes beyond just being unable to do homework well. Writing skills teach young kids how to organize complicated ideas and explain them so that they can communicate, persuade, and connect with the world. Without developing writing skills, kids will grow up unable to advocate for themselves and unable to contribute their ideas to the world. An AI tool can write for you, but it cannot help you when you are interviewing for a job, talking to your community about how to improve our neighborhoods, and answering difficult questions at work or school. So why have young students given up on writing? It’s not just AI. Older kids have given up because it’s hard to do, takes a lot of time, and most importantly, leaves them open for criticism from teachers and other students as they learn to write. Lack of confidence in their voices is a big reason why kids have stopped writing. What kids need today is a positive and safe environment where they can build their writing skills without ridicule and criticism.
Your Solution: How are you solving this problem? Share your specific solution.
I built Creative Righters to be that positive and safe space where kids can develop their storytelling and writing skills free from negativity and judgment. https://creativerighters.org/ First, Creative Righters is run by youth to encourage kids as they develop their writing voices. Kids do not feel as comfortable sharing their writing when they know teachers and adults will be evaluating their work. Instead, Creative Righters is run by a team of young students - peers who know what it feels like to be nervous about writing and criticism. Second, Creative Righters does not push to rewrite our young writers’ works. We offer positive suggestions, advice, and thematic, organization, and grammar suggestions that do not change the voice of the young writers we mentor. Third, we set up writing contests and writing workshops to encourage kids to write and make writing fun for them. https://creativerighters.org/writing-contest-winners Fourth, our goal is to reach young kids who do not have the support they need to write and tell stories. That means we target underserved kids in our cities. We make a point to also focus our work with young kids dealing with stressful treatments at our local hospitals. Like many things, being good at something takes lots of practice. Kids today need a safe place where they can freely practice their writing and storytelling skills. That's Creative Righters. As they develop their writing skills , kids discover that writing and storytelling is actually a lot of fun. Helping kids find their voices and the joy of storytelling is the solution to our problem with declining literacy skills in youth today. Here is an example of the kids I help at the Creative Righters events: (https://www.instagram.com/p/DPm4H3OEmfI/)
Impact: How has your project created impact / made a difference so far? Or, if at an early stage, what will impact look like?
At Creative Righters, we’ve mentored and published over 400 young writers and counting. (https://creativerighters.org/about) We run multiple writing contests each year and have received hundreds of submissions from kids for our contests. These contests get kids excited about writing. We’ve supplied young patients at local hospitals over 3500 of our storytelling kits (containing writing tools, art supplies, and positive messaging) to support them so that they can write their stories while they are stuck in the hospital dealing with the stress of their treatments. (https://www.instagram.com/p/DPm4H3OEmfI/) We have thousands of readers and followers on social media who offer positive encouragement to our young writers. We’ve had over 250 volunteers support our writing workshops and storytelling kit events. We continue to shed light on the issue of youth literacy with over 100K views of Creative Righters videos on YouTube. (https://www.youtube.com/shorts/RH3GJIxZVK4) We are making people aware of the problem and working with partners to help solve it. Our partners in our mission include the San Francisco Public Library, the YMCA, UCSF Children's Hospital, CPMC Child Life Services, and Nickelodeon Kids TV. Together, we are reaching thousands of underserved youth and showing them how fun writing and storytelling can be.
Your Innovation: What is different about your project compared to other programs or solutions already out there? How is your project new or innovative?
There are other places where young writers can share their writing and art: (tutoring services, school, social media, and literary journals). But Creative Righters is different from each of these platforms in five ways: 1. Youth Run. Creative Righters is run by kids to support their peers as they build their writing voices. Kids don’t feel comfortable sharing their writing when they know adults will be evaluating them. Instead, Creative Righters is run by a youth team - peers who know what it feels like to be nervous about writing. We work to make kids feel safe to share their writing. 2. We don’t ignore any writing submissions. Unless they win, kids rarely get any response from the literary magazines that typically run writing contests. Being ignored can be just as painful for a young writer as being criticized. However, at Creative Righters we give positive feedback to every single writing contest submission we receive, whether they win or lose. That way, young writers know they have been heard. That’s the positivity that young writers need to grow. 3. We are safe. Social media and adult-run sites are often unsafe for young writers who put themselves out there when they share their writing. There are no negative chats or comments on Creative Righters - only words of encouragement from our youth team. 4. We make writing fun. We host writing contests on fun topics (like “Invent a New Word”) with fun prizes. We run writing workshops with yummy candy and treats. We make it fun to write and tell stories. 5. We are a non-profit and free to use. We make ourselves available to under-resourced students everywhere. We don’t charge anything for our service. We give kids a platform to be heard and do it without any submission fees or monthly subscription costs.
How many people are on your team?
3
Your team: What role(s) do your team members play? How do you share leadership with them?
I'm Lottie Nguyen, the Founder & Director of Creative Righters. Willow N. and Lana L. are Associate Directors. We also have over a dozen regular volunteers who help us set up our events, contests, and mentoring of our Creative Righters. I mentor all young writers, build our services (events and writing contests), and find partnerships to expand the reach of Creative Righters. Willow mentors young writers under the age of 9 and Lana mentors writers from 10-17 years old.
What’s Next: What are the next steps you plan to take to grow or strengthen your project over the next year? If your project is still in the idea stage, describe the steps you will take over the next three months to launch or begin developing it.
For the next year, we’ll work to expand the reach of Creative Righters. First, we’ll build more partnerships with other organizations who share our goal of building youth literacy skills. This year I made partnerships with Nickelodeon Kids TV (https://www.youtube.com/shorts/RH3GJIxZVK4) and the YMCA. I will target partnerships with other educational organizations, including schools in under-resourced neighborhoods, with offers to help them get their students excited about writing and reading. Second, we’ll work to expand our users (young writers and readers). We’ll be more active on YouTube and social media, to get more users involved in our Creative Righters activities, like our writing contests and story submissions. Third, we’ll expand our services. We are preparing to create a book drive service to donate books to local libraries and schools. We’ll expand our writing contest offerings and prizes as well. And we will reach out to other local hospitals to make Storytelling Kit Events for their young patients too. Finally, we’ll work to educate the public about how important it still is to teach youth to learn storytelling skills, and the positive impact a safe forum like Creative Righters can have on kids. There is a science behind teaching students how to write and tell stories, and our goal is to help spread that knowledge to as many people as we can.
How do you encourage other people to join your project or learn about the problem you’re working on? If you have a new idea, tell us how you will do this in the future.
Currently, Creative Righters has the following community impact: We have mentored and published over 400 young storytellers. We have thousands of readers and social media followers. We have over 100,000 views of our videos on YouTube. We have enlisted the help of over 250 volunteers for our Storytelling Kit Events. (https://creativerighters.org/about) But we will be working to expand on Creative Righters’ reach this year through the following work: 1. Use social media to increase awareness of the youth literacy problem and available solutions. 2. Continue to work directly with youth to build their confidence and show them the resources available to support their literacy. 3. Build more partnerships with like-minded organizations so we join efforts for a bigger impact. 4. Make writing and storytelling fun again. Most of all I will be working on showing kids how fun it is to work at Creative Righters and to build your storytelling skills. That means more fun writing contests and prizes, more events with exciting activities, and making sure kids have a great time when they are sharing their stories with each other. Together we can make a difference.
