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826 Valencia is a non-profit organization in the Mission District of San Francisco, California, United States, dedicated to helping children and young adults develop writing skills and to helping teachers inspire their students to write. It was the basis for the 826 National organization, which has centers on the United States with the same goal.
Named for its street address, 826 Valencia was founded in 2002 by author Dave Eggers and veteran teacher Nínive Calegari, who both have ties to the literary and educational community. 826 consists of three centers, each encompassing a writing lab, a street-front student-friendly store that partially funds the programs, and two satellite classrooms in nearby middle schools. The organization is named after the street address of the first center. [1]
Over 1,400 volunteers—including published authors, magazine founders, SAT-course instructors, and documentary filmmakers—have donated their time to work with thousands of students. These volunteers allow 826 Valencia to offer all of its services for free. [2]
826 Valencia opened a second location in the Tenderloin in 2016 [3] and another in the Mission Bay neighborhood in 2019. [4]
826 Valencia's programming includes-in-schools programs, workshops, field trips, after school tutoring and student publishing.
826 Valencia runs San Francisco's "only independent pirate supply store". The store is the front entrance of the tutoring center and has the look and feel of an authentic pirate shop. [5] It sells pirate clothing, eyepatches, compasses, spyglasses, pirate dice, skull flags, and secret treasures. It features handmade signs, scattered around the store, offering tongue-in-cheek wisdom, such as "Uses for Lard" (#5: "Lard Fights") and "Guidelines for New Shipmates" (#4: "No forgetting to swab"). Unsuspecting visitors are sometimes treated to surprise "moppings."
Shoppers can also find back issues of McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, books published by McSweeney's, and literary compilations written by 826 Valencia students. The books of student writing published by 826 Valencia include forewords, illustrations and interviews from public figures such as Former San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom and actor Robin Williams.
The Pirate Supply Store was originally created through necessity. After being turned down for regular use of church basements and school facilities, the founders discovered an empty store on Valencia Street. City ordinances required businesses in that area of the city to be either retail or catering, so the Pirate Supply Store was opened in 2002 as the "legitimate" business front for the writing center. It also helps fund the tutoring program. [6]
Dave Eggers commissioned cartoonist Chris Ware to design the mural for the facade of 826 Valencia's building. [7] The mural depicts "the parallel development of humans and their efforts at and motivations for communication, spoken and written." [8] The 3.9m x 6m mural was applied by artisans to Ware's specifications. [7] Describing the work, Ware said "I didn’t want it to make anyone 'feel good', especially in that typically muralistic 'hands across the water' sort of way,"..."I especially wanted it to be something that people living in the neighbourhood could look at day after day and hopefully not tire of too quickly. I really hoped whomever might happen to come across it would find something that showed a respect for their intelligence, and didn’t force-feed them any 'message'." [7]
826 Valencia has inspired a number of other projects across the US, known as 'chapters'. In late 2004, just before the founding of four new chapters, 826 National was launched as an umbrella organization that provides logistical support to its chapters. [9]
There are now nine chapters that make up 826 National: 826 Valencia, 826NYC in Brooklyn, 826LA in Los Angeles, 826CHI in Chicago, 826michigan (serving Ann Arbor, Detroit, and Ypsilanti), 826 Boston in Boston, 826DC in Washington, DC, 826 New Orleans, and most recently, 826 MSP in Minneapolis.
826 Valencia has also inspired similar projects in several countries:
United States
Canada
Italy
United Kingdom
Australia
Sweden
Ireland
Austria
France
Netherlands
Other
In April 2010, as an extension of the 826 Valencia scholarship program, Eggers launched ScholarMatch, a nonprofit organization that connects donors with students to make college more affordable.
Dave Eggers is an American writer, editor, and publisher. He wrote the best-selling memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Eggers is also the founder of Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, a literary journal, a co-founder of the literacy project 826 Valencia and the human rights nonprofit Voice of Witness, and the founder of ScholarMatch, a program that matches donors with students needing funds for college tuition. His writing has appeared in several magazines.
Franklin Christenson "Chris" Ware is an American cartoonist known for his Acme Novelty Library series and the graphic novels Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth (2000), Building Stories (2012) and Rusty Brown (2019). His works explore themes of social isolation, emotional torment and depression. He tends to use a vivid color palette and realistic, meticulous detail. His lettering and images are often elaborate and sometimes evoke the ragtime era or another early 20th-century American design style.
The Mission District, commonly known as The Mission, is a neighborhood in San Francisco, California. One of the oldest neighborhoods in San Francisco, the Mission District's name is derived from Mission San Francisco de Asís, built in 1776 by the Spanish. The Mission is historically one of the most notable center of the city's Chicano/Mexican-American community.
McSweeney's Publishing is an American non-profit publishing house founded by editor Dave Eggers in 1998, headquartered in San Francisco. McSweeney's initially published only the literary journal Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, but has grown to publish novels, books of poetry, and other periodicals.
Precita Eyes Muralists Association is a community-based non-profit muralist and arts education group located in the Bernal Heights neighborhood of San Francisco, California. It was founded in 1977 by Susan and Luis Cervantes.
826NYC is a nonprofit organization located in Park Slope, Brooklyn. It provides free after-school tutoring, workshops, in-schools tutoring, help for English language learners, and assistance with student publications. Drawing from a volunteer base of over 2,000, which includes many teachers, writers and journalism professionals, 826NYC unites students with tutors. It is a chapter of 826 National.
826 National is a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping students, ages 6–18, improve their expository and creative writing skills at eight locations across the United States. The chapters include 826 Valencia in San Francisco, 826NYC in Brooklyn, 826LA in Los Angeles, 826CHI in Chicago, 826Michigan, 826 Boston in Boston, 826DC in Washington, DC, and 826 New Orleans.
826LA is a Los Angeles-based nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6–18 with their creative and expository writing skills and helping teachers inspire their students to write. Programs are structured around the beliefs that great leaps in learning can happen with one-on-one attention and that strong writing skills are fundamental to future success. 826LA was founded in 2005 and is one of several chapters of 826 National. To serve students across Los Angeles' various regions, there are two locations: 826LA in Mar Vista and 826LA in Echo Park. A satellite site at Manual Arts Senior High School in South L.A. opened in 2013.
Nínive Clements Calegari is an educator in the United States. Following ten years of classroom experience in public schools, she became an author and founded a national literacy program, 826 National. She also founded The Teacher Salary Project. Currently she is the CEO of Enterprise for Youth, an organization that empowers young people to prepare for and discover career opportunities in the San Francisco area through a three-phase program model of job-readiness training, paid internships with college credit, and ongoing career development and networking support.
Intersection for the Arts, established in 1965, is the oldest alternative non-profit art space in San Francisco, California. Intersection's reading series is the longest continuous reading series outside of an academic institution in the state of California.
Uptown Oakland is a neighborhood Oakland, California, located in the northern end of Downtown. It is located roughly between West Grand Avenue to the north, Interstate 980 to the west, City Center and 14th Street to the south, and Broadway to the east. The neighborhood has become an important entertainment district in recent years.
Litquake is San Francisco's annual literary festival. Originally starting out as Litstock for a single day in Golden Gate Park in the spring of 1999, it now has a ten-day run in mid-October, as well as year-round programs and workshops.
Kiara Brinkman is an American writer born in Omaha, Nebraska now living in San Francisco, California. Her 2007 novel, Up High in the Trees, was published by Grove Press and was widely reviewed. Brinkman has also authored several short stories. Her work has appeared in One Story, Pinelboyz, Failbetter and elsewhere. Her contribution to McSweeney’s, "Counting Underwater," was named one of the 100 Other Distinguished Stories of 2005 in The Best American Short Stories 2006.
StudioSTL is a St. Louis based non-profit that aims to develop writing skills in youth aged 6–18.
ScholarMatch is a San Francisco-based nonprofit organization that connects donors with prospective college students in order for them to help fund students' education.
Spells Writing Lab, Inc. aka (“Spells”) is a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA based 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that develops the creative and expository writing abilities of school-age children, 6 to 18 years old, through writing programs and teacher development. Spells was inspired by the model established by 826 National an organization started by educator Nínive Calegari and Dave Eggers, author of "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius," and founder of the publishing house, McSweeney's. Philly Spells is currently applying to join the 826 National network through the 826 National Chapter Development Process.
The Ministry of Stories is a non-profit organisation in East London dedicated to helping children and young adults develop writing skills and to helping teachers inspire their students to write.
The Story Factory is an Australian not-for-profit organisation designed to help indigenous and disadvantaged children aged between 7 and 17 years to develop their writing and storytelling skills. The programs run by the Story Factory aim to help young people, particularly those most at risk of losing confidence and then losing interest in schooling. The Story Factory conducts programs at its two creative writing centres, as short and long term residencies at primary and secondary schools, and as one-off visits.
Dewey Crumpler is an American painter and an associate professor at the San Francisco Art Institute. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and is featured in the permanent collections of the Oakland museum of California; the Triton Museum of Art, Santa Clara, California; and the California African American Museum, Los Angeles. Crumpler has received a Flintridge foundation award, National Endowment for the Arts fellowship grant, and the Fleishacker Foundation, fellowship eureka award. A digital image of his murals have been included in the 2017 Tate Modern’s exhibition Soul of a Nation: Art In the Age of Black Power in London.
Sendy Santamaria is an illustrator, artist and visual designer from San Diego, CA based in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Coordinates: 37°45′35″N122°25′17″W / 37.759665°N 122.421509°W