About

826 Valencia is a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write. Our services are structured around our belief that great leaps in learning can happen with one-on-one attention and that strong writing skills are fundamental to future success. With this in mind we provide drop-in tutoring, after-school workshops, in-schools tutoring, help for English language learners, and assistance with student publications. All of our programs are challenging and enjoyable, and ultimately strengthen each student's power to express ideas effectively, creatively, confidently, and in his or her individual voice.

Simply put, 826 Valencia helps students, ages 6-18, to develop their writing skills. Whether the students are working in the realm of fiction, nonfiction, or English as a second language, we are here to help them explore their love of writing. We offer free drop-in tutoring, after-school tutoring, workshops, and field trips. We also help students create their own story collections, zines, and other publications. Our method is simple: we assign free tutors so that the students can get one-on-one help. It's our belief that great leaps in English skills and comprehension can be made within hours if students are given concentrated help from knowledgeable tutors. In addition to drop-in tutoring, we offer a number of in-depth workshops, in which professionals teach a variety of topics to the students interested in learning additional skills. These include, but are not limited to: creative writing, journalism, film, design, photo manipulation, comics, and publishing to the Web. 826 Valencia's facilities are available as a free publishing resource, and our volunteers are available to assist with school and extracurricular student publications. We hope to support area teachers in getting their students excited about writing, while also helping students learn how to better express their ideas through the written word. We encourage teachers to bring their classes in for field trips, invite us to visit their schools, and urge students needing extra help to come by during our drop-in hours. Our volunteers create and teach evening and weekend workshops, organize our events, support our efforts to tutor in classrooms and lead fieldtrips here at our center. These volunteers are the life-blood of our programs. Each semester we celebrate our volunteers who have dedicated over 100 hours of service by throwing a champagne brunch to toast them, or treating them to a Giants game, or other fun events. In addition to our founding site at 826 Valencia in San Francisco, we also have 826 chapters in NYC, Los Angeles, Michigan, Seattle, and Chicago. Please take a look at our national video (12 MB) to catch a glimpse of the work we do at our 826 sites around the country.