may community outreach

Dear Friends of Project Write Now:

Calm. Safe. Energized. Inspired. Confident.

These are some of the words participants share about how they feel after a writing session with us—across all ages and backgrounds.

That’s because expressive writing offers immediate benefits. When you are given the space to write freely—without judgment—you feel seen, supported, and empowered.

At Project Write Now, we intentionally create these spaces. In school classrooms, with nonprofit and business partners, and virtually, we invite you to slow down, reflect, and connect—with yourself and with others in meaningful ways.

Today, more than ever, we need these spaces. We need more writing. Even the young people we work with are asking for more.

And you can help.

By giving a gift today, you’ll provide what is needed most in the world right now—authenticity, connection, and hope.

Mental Health Awareness Month may be ending today but our commitment to helping people improve their lives through the power of writing doesn’t.

You can be the difference.

With love & gratitude,

The Project Write Now Team

Blue Dot Community

At our first May meeting, the Blue Dot community celebrated Mother’s Day by reading “The Raincoat” by Ada Limón. The story sparked meaningful conversations about how mothers and mother figures show love, followed by written reflection and sharing. For our final session, we honored Mental Health Awareness Month with a reading of “I Am Enough” by Grace Byers. We discussed its themes of self-love, kindness, and respect, then wrote positive affirmations, expanded on a few that resonated with us, and then shared with the group. Both gatherings offered space for connection, reflection, and joy. We were reminded that love—for ourselves and others—is what makes life meaningful, and that we are all, truly, “enough.” We are grateful for the opportunity to write, share, and grow with the Blue Dot community.

Creating Change

Our executive director led a writing workshop for a virtual roundtable hosted by Creating Change on the topic “Writing Through Difficult Emotions.” After guiding participants through a grounding activity, Jennifer shared the benefits of expressive writing and journaling. Then the group wrote in response to the poem “Willow, Stop Weeping,” by Sally Wen Mao, in honor of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. It was incredible to hear the different approaches in writing in response to the poem. Upon conclusion, participants shared words such as “freeing,” “needed,” “like seeds have been planted,” “grounding and inspiring,” “a moment to breathe” to describe their experience. We are so grateful to have provided this workshop and look forward to more collaborations with Creating Change.

Little Silver Markham Place

As we closed out our time together at Markham Place in Little Silver, our 8th graders participated in the final session of the Ink & Insight Time Capsule Writing Experience, a powerful reflection on their past, present, and, most importantly, future. Each student engaged in future-focused journaling and activities. We began with a powerful metaphor of packing their bags for the next leg of their journey. Each student was invited to reflect on what qualities, values, lessons, and strengths they want to take with them to high school and what habits, fears, or doubts they are ready to release. From there, we created personal vision boards, imagining what life could look like after high school—five, ten, even fifteen years down the road. Their dreams stretched across colleges, careers, trades, travel destinations, and future families. Whether imagining becoming a business owner, living in another state, or walking across the graduation stage, the room buzzed with hope, ambition, and creativity. To close out our time, we created space for connection and memory. Students wrote messages to their classmates and shared laughs, inside jokes, and heartfelt notes. These signature pages became part of their personal time capsules, filled with keepsakes, letters to their future selves, artwork, and reflections. We sealed the time capsules with a ribbon and a personal date, maybe a future birthday, graduation day, or date years from now when they will open their time capsule and reconnect with who they were in this moment. We are so grateful to the Little Silver PTO for inviting us to provide this life-changing program.

Long Branch Girls Symposium 

We were so honored to participate in and help facilitate part of the 2025 Young Women’s Empowerment Day, an annual event for local high school students at the Anne Vogel Family Care and Wellness Center in Eatontown! Throughout the day, a diverse cross-section of phenomenal females presented and shared words of wisdom and knowledge from their relative career experiences with students from Long Branch High School, including two of our own instructors, Pamela Major & Meredith Avakian, who facilitated a panel discussion and writing reflections portion, respectively. Thanks to Monmouth Medical Center, Brookdale Community College, Long Branch Public Schools and the City of Long Branch for including in such an inspiring, well-planned and well-executed day to remember! 

Lunchtime Write-In 

Every Friday, writers meet on Zoom to write and share our stories. This month, we explored the themes: “May”, “Sock,” and “Thirty.” No matter where we Zoom in from, we all feel together in this space. Join us for our next Lunchtime Write-In to see what our upcoming themes will be!

Planned Parenthood Teen Conference

We were honored to be included in Planned Parenthood’s Teen Conference event in Edison, NJ, for our second year in a row! We met so many incredible teens and were thrilled to see some returning faces at our PWN table where we invited them to design their own journals. Then we held our Boundless Pages Workshop, during which teens wrote in response to prompts inspired by Alberto Rios’ “We Are of a Tribe.” We are so proud of the teens who wrote and shared their stories with us! Thank you, Planned Parenthood, for continuing to create such an engaging and supportive space for teens!

PWN India (Children)

We continued our work with a new group of students in India these past six weeks. We met on Zoom every Monday and started our hour off by writing about something that matters to us. Our focus was personal writing. We thought about memories from our weekend, upcoming school or family events, moments shared with friends and family, or something that was bothering us and just wrote to get our pens moving. After beginning each class with what we call “a brain dump” and just writing whatever is on our minds, we then used a poem or short excerpt from a story to begin a discussion and asked ourselves, “what does this make me think about?” Or “what line stands out to me and why?” Often an author or a poet will evoke feelings from the reader and this is a good way to dig deep and write about stories that matter to us. We used writing prompts such as: I dream about … I feel strong when … I like/dislike … One day I hope to … I no longer need … I remember when … These prompts helped us list ideas and thoughts in our notebooks so we could go back to them to write more. It’s amazing to see a little seed of an idea (usually from a list) turn into a page of writing. We ended our time together by reading a poem called  “Others” (author unknown) and discussing the idea of “the law of compensation” when it comes to being kind to others. The students then wrote thank you notes to people in their lives who have shown them kindness and will hopefully deliver these letters soon! Everyone loved sharing their stories, lists, poems, ideas, and feelings with the class!

PWN India (Adults)

With our journaling club in India, we continued writing in response to poetry. Inspired by spring, we wrote in response to Ada Limón’s “Instructions on Giving Up” and Naomi Shihab Nye’s “So Much Happiness.” The words that flowed and shared were so beautiful and hopeful, and exactly what we needed to hear. We love that we can connect across the globe through poetry and writing.

PWN Teen Voice & Verse Celebration + Open Mic

We had a blast celebrating the 16 winners of our 2025 PWN Teen Voice & Verse Contest. Even though we were on Zoom, the event felt just as powerful as if we were in front of a stadium. And be sure to read all of the winning pieces at Bridge Ink 9.2. Thank you so much to all who attended and all who submitted to our contest.

Red Bank Middle School 7th & 8th Grade AVID (in-school)

Our 7th & 8th grade AVID students have been working hard on final revisions for their end-of-year anthology pieces. We also read “Little Stones at My Window” by Mario Benedetti, “To a No. 2 Yellow Pencil on May 1, 2020” by Kimiko Hahn, “Wrap” by Aimee Nezhukumatathil, and “Wait Until It Grows Roots” by Tarfia Faizullah. We handed out stickers to the 8th grade class in celebration of Chris’s birthday and again on another day to the 7th grade class in celebration of Dillon’s birthday. We are also so grateful to have been invited to Red Bank Middle School’s 8th grade AVID graduation breakfast again. We were thrilled when Alex and Danny got up and read the collaborative poem we wrote together earlier in the year. We are SO proud of these students and can’t wait to celebrate with them again next week during our end-of-year Writers Celebration!

Red Bank Middle School 6th Grade AVID (in-school)

We worked with another round of 6th grade AVID students, teaching them about the joys of ekphrastic writing (writing inspired by art). We read “At the End of the World Is Forgetting” by Dick Westheimer and looked to the art that inspired the poem: “Abandoned Library” by Walter Arnold. Then we used that same art to inspire our own writing, making a list of all of the images and feelings that the art evoked in us and drawing from that list for our stories. We loved how different each piece came out even though we all used the same art as inspiration. That’s the real fun of ekphrasis!

Red Bank UMC Youth Group

We had a great time writing with the Red Bank UMC youth group. After brief introductions that mostly centered around our pets, we decorated notebooks to make them feel like ours. Then we read “A House Called Tomorrow” by Alberto Ríos and used lines from the poem as writing prompts. We were thrilled when the majority of the group volunteered to share their work! We are so grateful to have been welcomed into this space again and can’t wait to do more with the Red Bank UMC in the future.

Two River Theater Gala

Congratulations to the Two River Theater on a wonderful gala this month! We were so honored to have one of our writers, Nathalia Garcia, share her original spoken word piece “Mother,” alongside other incredible performances. Nathalia first performed this powerful piece during Two River Theater’s 2023 Crossing Borders Festival. We are so grateful for our partnership with the Two River Theater. Their commitment to elevating diverse voices and creating space for meaningful storytelling continues to inspire and empower us!

Write Out Loud

At Write Out Loud at the Asbury Book Cooperative, we explored the lost art of letter writing, recognizing how it once offered space for reflection, honesty, and emotional depth in ways today’s current forms of communication do not. Participants chose someone meaningful to write to and crafted an “update letter” that began with surface details but gradually went deeper—uncovering thoughts and feelings that often go unspoken in daily life. By sharing our letters within the group, we were able to see that letter writing is a powerful way to communicate and connect with ourselves—perhaps even more so than with the letter’s intended reader! Join us for our next Write Out Loud on June 6!

Scholarship Seats

Through our mission as a nonprofit organization, we remove barriers to participating in our fee-based classes by providing full and partial scholarship seats as well as payment plans. Since 2020, we’ve seen a dramatic increase in the need for financial assistance and therefore have met that need by offering more scholarship seats. For 2024, we provided 59 seats totaling $14,342.50. So far this year, we’ve provided 24 seats totaling $8,254. For information about our scholarship program or to become a valuable donor providing these seats, please email Jennifer Chauhan at jennifer@projectwritenow.org.