Story Love with Story Pirates

Story Pirates is a renowned media company that teaches and inspires creative writing and celebrates the words and ideas of kids. Story Pirates Changemakers, the nonprofit arm of Story Pirates, works to ensure that our high-quality media content and literacy programs are conspicuous, accessible, and affordable to under-resourced elementary students, teachers, schools, and districts; and that children from all backgrounds have the opportunity to believe that their words and ideas matter. No matter how wide Story Pirates grows through our media projects, Story Pirates Changemakers exists to ensure that our reach into under-resourced communities deepens at the same pace utilizing programs designed and honed from the knowledge we accrued working with thousands of students in schools across the country and around the world. The focus of Story Pirates Changemakers is on reducing the systemic disparity of education for underserved students and schools, where kids from traditionally marginalized backgrounds are not always given the opportunity to tell their own stories in their own words, and where language arts instructors are not always given the time and space for fostering these students' innate creativity and curiosity. We believe that amplifying kids’ voices is an important aspect of social justice, and it also inspires a lifelong love of learning and expression, in both kids and adults. When we adapt children’s writing, we treat each story as a professional theatrical text and ask our directors to use their dramaturgical skills to express the author's intent as faithfully as possible. When we teach creative writing, we encourage young authors in the same way because we believe that unabashedly complimenting creativity and providing a sense of ownership over their ideas functions as a type of social equity - providing children with a sense of creative liberty and autonomy which is often lacking among underserved youth. By elevating their ideas publicly and with great artistry and fanfare, we give them an experience that is life-changing.

Tens of thousands of kids send us their original stories every year. While we cannot adapt them all, we remain committed to ensuring that we read and respond to every single story we receive because we believe that when a caring adult tells a child that their words and ideas matter, that child will believe them. We are deeply grateful to be able to engage thousands of volunteers to provide personalized notes that compliment each author’s creativity and encourage their future writing. This endeavor has been recognized with the Anthem Award and Shorty Impact honors, and is powered by major corporations and their volunteer programs like Amazon, NBCUniversal, Salesforce, and Bloomberg, to name only a few. During an hour-long Story Love event, anywhere from 5-500 volunteers come together – on Zoom or in person – to read stories written by kids and write notes of encouragement. With as little as 2 weeks’ notice, we can set up an event for your team and take care of everything. Event types include: • The Happy Hour - meaningful time for your team to gather, laugh, and make a difference. With this option, you provide a list of volunteers who will each have their own set of stories to read and be encouraged to share delightful details with the group. • The Team Builder - a unique team-building event where participants work in pairs or small groups to read and respond to stories together, building camaraderie and connection in an experience unlike any other. • DIY - colleagues participate on their own time with live or recorded instructions (15-20 minutes in length) and access stories remotely for up to one week.