Goal: $25,000
The campaign began February 3 and ends on May 2, 2025
The Writers in the Community program has a powerful impact on young people’s lives. Help make a difference by donating to the 2025 Pyramid Campaign today.
Registry No. 14031 9518 RR 0001
Canada Revenue Agency www.cra-arc.gc.ca/charities
About Writers in the Community
QWF’s Writers in the Community program pairs small groups of young people with a professional writer or literary performance artist who can teach them and, more importantly, motivate them, to use language to express themselves in productive ways. In each project, a writer-facilitator works with a small group for 10 weeks, teaching them language tools, giving them writing prompts, and ultimately, boosting their self-confidence by showing them that they are capable of producing literary work of value.
Some recent WIC highlights:
- In 2024, we completed 18 projects with 15 community partners (three of which were new to us), involving roughly 160 young people.
- For the second year in a row, we hired Elijah, a previous WIC participant, as an intern. He has collaborated on two projects at Ullluriaq, and staff say his presence and leadership has been very impactful for the boys. We hope to expand this opportunity to include other alumni of WIC.
- WIC facilitator Ryan Barnett has been providing his groups with the tools to create comics and we hear from some of our partners that this type of writing would appeal to their youth. In order to offer that option in more locations, we have recently provided a tutorial session to WIC facilitators who want to learn how to incorporate Pixton, the online app, into their teaching.
- We also hired 5 talented new writer-facilitators to ensure that we have the depth of talent to meet our growing number of partners’ requests for the program.
And did you know….?
- Since the spring of 2023, we have been presenting every participant with a special notebook and pen at the end of each project. We let them know that, while the workshops have ended, we want to encourage and support their future writing activities.
- Starting in 2025, we are reserving at least two spots in our new youth journal, Quist, for the work of WIC participants.
- Also starting this spring, we are offering students showing real promise and interest one-on-one mentorship over 20 weeks after they complete their WIC sessions.
As always, many of the young writers we work with have been detained under the Youth Protection Act or the Youth Criminal Justice Act. Others are single teenage mothers without strong support from their families. There are kids with learning disabilities who haven’t flourished in regular schools, and youngsters with psychiatric disorders who can’t live at home on a regular basis. The workshops our writers design give these people an opportunity to express themselves creatively, build their confidence, and gain the literacy skills so essential for success in life.
Our 2025 Campaign Goal
Most of our partners are unable to make a financial contribution to the program. We raise most of the money we need from foundations and public funders, but it’s not enough. Fortunately, the QWF community has been extraordinarily generous since we launched our first Pyramid Campaign in 2011; each year our members have contributed a significant proportion of the funds that help us to finance the Writers in the Community workshops.
Thanks to your generosity and the coming together of our community, last year we raised $22,362.
This year, we hope you’ll help us increase the total so we can help to support some of the one-on-one mentorships. We aim to raise $25,000.
Here’s one way we can do it:
- 25 “I want to help” donations of $30
- 35 “I can do more!” donations of $50
- 45 “I make a living as a writer!” donations of $100
- 30 “I have a grown-up job!” donations of $500
- 3 “Angel” donations of $1000
Two Ways to Give:
You can make a donation online and get a tax receipt directly from CanadaHelps, but they’ll take a percentage.
If you want QWF to get every cent of your contribution, you can mail us a cheque made out to “Quebec Writers’ Federation” with WIC 2025 written on the memo line. Be sure to include your email address so we can send you your tax receipt.
You can also consider pledging a fixed monthly amount for four months (or longer!) using the online donation form or by mailing us postdated cheques in one letter.
Whichever way you donate, do let us know how you’d like your name to appear when we acknowledge your gift.