My Nonprofit Reviews

My daughter has been doing their workshops for six years now, and they have been life changing for her. The writing instruction is terrific--she has grown into a confident and creative writer, secure in her own voice but also willing to experiment. Resistance and procrastination around writing assignments for school have entirely disappeared. But it's even more than the writing--Uptown Stories has been the place where she can be entirely herself, a space of deep trust with her teacher and peers. And that is utterly priceless for an adolescent.

The Uptown Stories workshops are amazing--my daughter, now 13, has been enrolled in them for more than two years. They have given her a place to express herself outside of family and school, to nurture her skills and self-identity as a writer (again, crucially, outside of school), and a confidence that I wish for every teenager. I love the ethos of Uptown Stories--they run on a shoestring but still pay their excellent instructors, and they have developed a cheerful, cheeky roster of "small jobs" to leverage volunteer assistance.