Los Angeles (CNN) — After being laid off from a corporate job, many people competence use their separation income to compensate bills or buy groceries.
Keren Taylor used hers to launch a nonprofit.
“A lot of people were wondering what a ruin we was doing,” Taylor said.
The former sales executive dipped into her assets and began operative 18-hour days to start a artistic essay module for at-risk teenagers in Los Angeles.
“Some of a girls face a biggest hurdles teenagers could ever face: assault during home, assault in their community, outrageous schools with certainty guards in a parking lot and in a lunchroom,” pronounced Taylor, 50. “They need to know that their voice is important. Their stories are important.”
In a Los Angeles open schools, scarcely one in 5 students drops out before high propagandize graduation.
In a final 12 years, Taylor’s organization, WriteGirl, has helped around 500 girls connoisseur high propagandize and go on to college.
The energy of a lady — and her coop
This year, 350 girls from 60 area high schools are participating in Taylor’s program.
All a girls accept one-on-one mentoring to work on their writing, vocalization skills and academics. This, Taylor says, gives them a certainty to pronounce adult and strech out for assistance in school, in their relations and during home.
“There are so many girls with so many heart-wrenching stories,” Taylor said. “I mostly arise adult in a night meditative about them.”
About 150 girls take partial in a group’s “Core Program.” Some accommodate with a designated coach each week; others attend monthly workshops for coach support.
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Taylor expects all 60 of a seniors in a core module to enroll in college subsequent year.
“We are operative feverishly to make certain they all go to college, even yet this is a biggest series that we’ve ever had,” she said.
The other participating students are critically at-risk: Many are pregnant, have children or are incarcerated.
“(Our van) takes a volunteers to them,” Taylor said. “That’s been unequivocally sparkling to move a module to girls who differently wouldn’t be means to come to us.”
Finding their voice
Taylor says a module helps a girls urge their grades and their confidence.
“They can travel into a WriteGirl seminar and they’re not going to get criticized, judged, graded, any of that,” she said. “They can only relax, let their ideas out and grow as individuals.”
Anastasia pronounced she was flunking classes until she was interconnected with a WriteGirl coach who took a time to work with her each week.
“My abbreviation improved, my sentences were over amazing, so it was extraordinary how we transformed,” pronounced a 14-year-old. “I used to get F’s, and now we get A’s, B’s and C’s.”
“A lot of a girls have those ah-ha moments, like, ‘Wow, we could be a journalist.’ Or ‘I could go on to go to college outward of Los Angeles,’ ” Taylor said. “They have these eye-opening practice that unequivocally give them a lot some-more wish about their future.”
The talent pool
WriteGirl mentors embody journalists, screenwriters, authors, poets and executives from sundry backgrounds and ethnicities. Each is asked to dedicate during slightest one hour a week to their mentee.
“Some mentors contend it’s a many rewarding thing they’ve ever done,” Taylor said. “(They) tell us they get only as most as they give, if not more.”
Mentors and mentees also attend in monthly programs that try subjects such as poetry, broadcasting and screenwriting. The girls can also accept assistance with college applications.
Each lady has a event to contention their essay for publication. Taylor has destined a prolongation of some-more than dual dozen collections of works by teenage girls and their mentors. WriteGirl publications have perceived countless awards.
Taylor, who didn’t take a income for dual years so a a module could get going, says she has no regrets about her preference to desert a corporate world.
“I wanted to do something that would be moving and something that would have definition for others,” she said. “I arise adult each morning and we consider about how we can make a larger impact.”
Want to get involved? Check out a WriteGirl website during www.writegirl.org and see how to help.