My Nonprofit Reviews

There are many ways to start a morning, a coffee, reading the paper, going for a run. But the best way I've found is to help children become authors for the first time. And every morning at 826NYC and the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Store, that's exactly what happens.

It starts when a class arrives in a store unlike any other--with gadgets, capes, masks and tins of any superpower you can imagine. Then we travel through a secret door and begin writing a story collaboratively from whatever comes out of their incredible imaginations. At the end, every child has an individual storybook with their own ending and their author photo on the back.

826NYC's field trips are free for New York City's Title One public schools, meaning that these schools serve students with fewer resources available to them. Allowing the students to shine and showing them that their ideas are valuable and their creativity is something special are the reasons I keep giving back, class after class, even after working with over 1500 students myself.

It doesn't matter if the story is about a flying bookshelf looking for a friend, or a talking chicken nugget solving a mystery or a giant spider trying to take over the universe, seeing their eyes light up as the first book they've written comes out of the binding machine is the best.

Through its field trips, After-School Tutoring & Writing, and other programs, 826NYC is building a community of volunteers that give their time to make sure all students have chance to flex their creative muscles and see the value of self-expression. This is so important because it takes a weight off the shoulders of teachers who already bear a huge burden in an increasingly tested and scrutinized field of education.