Just got this press release:
SEATTLE — 826 Seattle announced today a gift from Amazon.com of $25,000 to support their youth writing programs.
826 Seattle is a nonprofit writing and tutoring center dedicated to helping youth, ages six to 18, improve their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write. Its services are structured around a belief that great leaps in learning can happen with one-on-one attention and that strong writing skills are fundamental to future success.
Full press release is after the jump. This is really wonderful news. Good job, Amazon. You’ve come a long way from the bad old days.
The gift from Amazon.com will be used to support our programming team whose mandate is to create programs that help children in Seattle learn the essential skill of writing. These programs include after-school tutoring and evening and weekend writing workshops. To directly support our schools, the organization offers field trips where teachers are invited to bring their classes to 826 Seattle to participate in theatrical writing experiences. Additionally 826 Seattle also sends trained volunteers into the classroom to support the work of teachers, lending one-on-one help to students as they work to create their stories. A final component is publishing where students are invited as well as helped by volunteers to do the necessary work to make a story worthy of publishing. 826 Seattle publishes anthologies of student work, many of which can be purchased on Amazon.com.
“Whether it is gifted young writers destined to be novelists or struggling young people who are learning the very basics of punctuation, 826 Seattle strives to give every student the individualized attention each needs to succeed in improving their competency with writing,” says Teri Hein, Executive Director, 826 Seattle.
The heart of 826 Seattle’s work is its volunteers whose active ranks are represented by over 400 people. “We are able to do the work we do because of the generous hearts of so many people here in Seattle. However, it takes staff to responsibly manage and create opportunities for these volunteers and that is where the Amazon gift will help us. By giving us money we can use for salaries we will be able to organize and train more volunteers which translates to helping more children learn to write, whether it is in the schools or at our location in Greenwood,” states Hein.
“Given our shared connection and commitment to the written word, Amazon.com’s support of 826 Seattle is a natural fit,” according to Jon Fine, director of Author & Publisher Relations at Amazon.com. “Beyond the essential foundational writing skills that 826 Seattle brings to children in this community, we believe they are also helping to nurture terrific new authors for the future.”
826 Seattle is one of seven youth writing centers located across the country, all operating under the umbrella of 826 National, an organization co-founded by author Dave Eggers and teacher Ninive Calegari. To learn more about the work of 826 Seattle visit 826seattle.org.
That money belongs to the shareholders. They have no business giving the shareholders money away.
Gee, for a guy who made billions riding on the back of countless content producers, it seems rather puny.
It may sound puny, but it will pay someone’s salary. It is much needed.
Well, it’s Dave Eggers’ baby, and the literary hipster sells a ton of copy on their little website, so it figures a corp like Amazon would fund a mainstream author’s venture. You wouldn’t see them do this for, say, the Hugo House.
826 Seattle is awesome and it’s great to see them get support and publicity. But bravo, Gomez, for finding the most negative take possible on the story.
@4. Actually, Amazon gave Hugo House even more money than 826 Seattle, $35,000 to support the Hugo Literary Series, where authors are commissioned to create new work on a theme.
How much of your salary comes from Amazon’s PR department? What a tool.