September Community Outreach
Dear Friends of Project Write Now:
We cannot say THANK YOU enough!
Our 10th Anniversary Community Celebration was pure magic, and it’s all because of YOU!
A HUGE thank you to everyone who contributed to making the night unforgettable—from our planning committee, volunteers, and event sponsors to our community partners, honorees, performers, musicians, and video contributors. You helped showcase the incredible community we’ve built together over the past 10 years.
And to everyone who joined us in the audience—your loving energy filled the room and moved many to joyful, heartfelt tears.
THAT is the power of creative expression!
A special shout out to the Two River Theater and their fantastic staff for opening their doors to their beautiful space for this event and going above and beyond all night.
We would also like to take a moment to thank all of the people who give so much of themselves—their talents, their passions, their voices—to ensure as many people as possible have opportunities to express themselves through writing and sharing their stories. Thank you to our incredible PWN Team, Board of Directors, community partners, writers of all ages, and our donors!
And thank you to YOU!
Whether you’ve taken a class, signed your child up for a class, participated in one of our events, or given a generous gift, YOU help us provide meaningful writing experiences that foster authenticity, connection, and empathy.
With love & gratitude,
Here’s what else we’ve been up to this month. If you are interested in bringing a program to your school or organization, email executive director Jennifer Chauhan at jennifer@projectwritenow.org.
Asbury Park High School
The 12th graders in our Voices & Vision program are on a journey of discovery and responsibility. Through writing and reflection, they are recognizing that transition is a difficult time, as they move out of high school and into adulthood. We are working on criteria for selecting schools, achievements that create more interest from sponsors, entering the workplace, as well as their Values & Vision. The students have been chronicling their work and experiences and combining it with their college/personal statements.
Bridge Ink 8.7
We have put together a special issue of Bridge Ink this month, featuring interview stories written by teens who participated in The Interview Project during the summer. This project required teens to interview notable citizens from Blue Dot Social & Community Wellness and document the stories they want to preserve. Check it out now!
Brookdale Community College
We were honored to be invited to provide expressive writing workshops for a group of students at the Brookdale Community College Freehold Campus. Using Alberto Ríos’ “When Giving Is All We Have” as inspiration, we wrote lists of who we’re grateful for and then selected one to handwrite a letter to. We love how thoughtful students are in selecting stationery and stickers for their letters and can’t wait to hear how the recipients react. Hopefully we’ll be back with this group next semester.
Lunchtime Write-In
On Fridays, we host a one-hour writing workshop on Zoom during which we write in response to themed prompts. This month, we explored the themes: “Tire” and “Bell.” Though writers never have to share, we always enjoy hearing one another’s pieces and have formed an incredible, supportive community. Join us for our next Lunchtime Write-In to see what our upcoming themes will be!
Red Bank Public Library
We kicked off NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) with eight other writers at the Red Bank Public Library. It was so lovely being in a space where everyone was brought together by a love of storytelling. Each project we worked on was so different and unique from the next. We hope these writers continue their amazing stories and share them with us when they are complete. Happy NaNoWriMo!
PWN India (Adults)
With our PWN adult journaling club, we continued writing in response to poetry. We read “Paról” by Feliz Lucina Molina and picked a line that was resonating for us to write off of. Our next session we did our Gratitude Project, using Alberto Ríos’ “When Giving Is All We Have” as inspiration to write letters of gratitude to loved ones. During our Community Celebration, we were surprised with a gratitude video that our intern and teaching assistant Khushreet Kaur Batia made thanking PWN for our programs in India. PWN India is very special to our hearts, and especially to our executive director, whose father emigrated from India.
Red Bank Middle School
- 7th & 8th Grades (in-school)
We gifted cool T-shirts to our 7th & 8th grade AVID students to wear to our 10-Year Community Celebration, and we are so grateful that they were able to participate as greeters. We also read “When Giving Is All We Have” by Alberto Ríos. Our 8th graders continued working on their personal statements while our 7th graders wrote gratitude lists including people, places, animals, things, activities, seasons, moments, and more. We deepened our lists by adding specific details—for example, if we wrote “mom” on our lists, then we had to add what specifically about our moms we are grateful for. We loved when students raced to the share circle, all eager to read their gratitude pieces. And we especially loved when students had Ms. Campbell, Project Write Now, and their new shirts on their lists, too!
- PWN Quest Club (after-school)
We read “Don’t Go Into the Library” by Alberto Ríos at Quest Club (our after-school writing program for RBMS students in grades 6-8). Then we wrote about mysterious places, both real and fictional. We tried to really focus on the setting, thinking about those sensory details—What do you see? Hear? Smell? Taste? Feel? Where is this place? How do you get there? One student shared a wildly imaginative story of a place where giant food appeared and fell from the sky. Another wrote a scary story where our narrator was lost and didn’t know how they got there. Then we wrote two collaborative stories, each writing one sentence and passing the paper to the next!
- PWN Writing Club (after-school)
The 4th and 5th graders have been enthusiastically engaged in each writing activity. They love working in groups to create stories and even their own graphic novels! Two highlights this month were stretching a moment to create a detailed picture in the reader’s head and using the five senses in their writing to really bring their stories to life. Last week, the students wrote letters of gratitude including all different reasons they are grateful. Really, the gratitude belongs to us for being able to spend time with such wonderful students!
Shore House
Shore House spent November getting curious about a variety of possibilities. We spent time imagining the origins of a carved wooden and ivory box, we created fictional and fantasy short stories about topics like time machines and challenged ourselves to write cohesive stories that contain 26 sentences, each beginning with consecutive letters of the alphabet. It was a month filled with creativity and lots of sharing! We can’t wait to see what December brings.
Teen Writing Space
Teen leader Josh ran our class this month, offering inspirational writing prompts such as: two characters stuck in an elevator together but unable to speak, the most dramatic introduction for a horror story using the words: “rain,” “whisper,” and “secret,” New Year’s resolutions—what you did well and what you can improve on, and ideas of what progress means and looks like to you. We had great conversations digging into our craft together. We can’t wait to reconvene for our next class on December 12. You can still join us!
Two River Theater
We are thrilled to be collaborating with the Two River Theater for a new playwriting program. The first group we are working with is Lunch Break, and each participant is writing their own original 10-minute play, which will be performed by professional actors on Tuesday, December 17 at Lunch Break. The event is free and open to the public so we hope you’ll join us!
Project HEAL
We were so honored to have partnered with Project HEAL and Wild & Free Painting for a very special “Unmasking Creativity” workshop this month. In this fun and meaningful session, we explored the duality of self-expression through some writing and conversation as well as the creation and painting of masks. We had meaningful group sharing and appreciated the entire interaction. It was such a phenomenal way to spend a Friday! We are grateful for these community partnerships and look forward to future workshops together.
Write Out Loud
Every second Tuesday of the month, we gather at the Asbury Book Cooperative for some communal writing and sharing in our Write Out Loud workshops. For November, the focus was on gratitude. We read Mary Oliver’s poem “Mindful,” and we had a nice dialogue about the word choice and meaning. Writers were invited to use some of her words as inspiration, to write a new piece, or use it for a “blackout” poem. Alternatively, writers were encouraged to write a gratitude letter if that resonated more with them. Attendees were also given the chance to submit a theme for an upcoming Write Out Loud. We are looking forward to our final meetup of the year on December 10 (noting our new time of 6 p.m.). Join us!
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. For information about our scholarship program or to become a valuable donor providing these seats, please email Jennifer Chauhan at jennifer@projectwritenow.org.
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