Paint Me Like I Am - United States

Organisers work to make poetry "cool" in an effort to motivate students to make literature a part of their lives, learn communication skills, and experiment with new ways of expressing themselves. Workshops held in Washington, San Francisco, and the Bronx are designed to enable young people to articulate their anxieties and troubles in a fun, supportive environment. For example, the Washington WritersCorps programme has held regular readings for youth at a local bookstore. One organiser noted that for many of the young poets, the readings were the first time that they had been in a bookstore. The readings led to a Youth Poetry Slam League, in which every Washington middle school and high school competes with their own teams, as well as an annual poetry "slam". Several people involved in the slams and workshops suggested publishing a selection of poems.

The work of 100 of these teen poets is included in the book published by HarperCollins in March 2003. Themed sections carry titles like "Friendships" and "Furious". Each section begins with a quote from a famous writer, as well as a writing challenge that includes questions that helped the students develop a springboard for their creativity during the workshops. The poems, some of which draw on rap, hip hop, and slam, reveal the pain of young people who have experienced hardships, as in the following: "I remember when my first crush died of a / Drive-by. / I remember when I / felt like the whole world / Stopped." To cite another example, in "Leaving China", Jia Hua Miao writes: "To say good-bye/Words sick at my heart/My tears would not drop out." The final section of the book gives directions for holding a poetry circle, where participants act as both teachers and students.

Youth.

Launched in 1994 as a collaboration between the National Endowment for the Arts and AmeriCorps, WritersCorps is an organisation dedicated to improving the literacy and communication skills of at-risk youth. Since 1994, more than 40,000 teens from disadvantaged areas have participated in the programme. (The programmes are no longer federally funded. The Washington project is a nonprofit organisation; the San Francisco and Bronx programmes are projects of the San Francisco Arts Commission and Bronx Council for the Arts, respectively).

At the end of each year, the Washington programme publishes a chapbook for the students' use and community readings. The San Francisco WritersCorps programme has published annual anthologies of its students' work, the most recent of which is Believe Me, I Know.

Evaluations of participants in WritersCorps indicate that 80% improve their writing, 87% improve their communication skills, 92% identify and express emotions better, and 86% have improved grammar, spelling, and punctuation.