VOICES FROM THE FIELD - Partnering for Literacy Impact

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by McQueen

VOICES FROM THE FIELD - Partnering for Literacy Impact explores how two organizations collaborated to address literacy gaps among city youth, especially amid widening achievement disparities. The essay frames writing as a source of joy and agency, argues that trust and shared risk-taking can strengthen afterschool programming, and details complementary strengths: community youth work and a no-barriers, sliding-scale writing approach. It also describes evaluation goals for replicable, field-level impact.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages8

Reading Time20 min

AccessFree to download

Voices from the Field

Literacy achievement gap and urgency

Organization profiles and shared vision

Partnership design, risk, and trust

Program outcomes and collaborative model

VOICES FROM THE FIELD Partnering for Literacy Impact Susan Matloff-Nieves & Rebecca Wallace-Segall All young people have stories to tell. Yet when children and teens declare that they hate writing or are too embarrassed to admit they like it, elevating their voices becomes challenging. It is urgent that educators, policy makers, youth development workers and leaders, and philanthropists work together to find a way. In 2018, only 36 percent of black middle schoolers and 38 percent of Latinx middle schoolers in New York City were proficient in English language arts, compared to 74 percent of White middle schoolers (Domanico, 2018) . Since then, the achievement gap has deepened nationwide, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic (Department of Education Office of Civil Rights, 2021) . In the land of free speech, far too many lack the skill to exercise that basic, human, American right. The reasons are complex and systemic, and the resulting reluctance to read and write during free time further widens the skills gap. The good news: taking on this challenge can be life-changing for all involved. SUSAN MATLOFF-NIEVES is a senior leader at Goddard Riverside Community Center in New York City. A youth and community worker for over 30 years, her interest is the intersection of social justice, practice, and research. She has contributed to The SAGE Handbook of Youth Practice, Youth and Inequality in Education (Routledge) and coauthored Breaking Through, a guide to engaging girls in STEM. REBECCA WALLACE-SEGALL, executive director of Writopia Lab, founded the organization and its educational framework and no-barriers sliding-scale model in 2007. She is a master’s candidate at City University of New York Graduate Center in Urban Education Policy. She studied performance measurement at Harvard and was a 2021 scholarship recipient for Columbia University’s Senior Leaders Program for Nonprofit Professionals. She has published in The Atlantic and The Wall Street Journal. Voices from the Field essays are not peer reviewed. Our story shows how two nonprofits with distinct but overlapping missions partnered to better address the literacy needs of our city’s youth. We brought to the partnership a shared vision and radical empathy for the other. We had the support of a steadfast funder. Marrying each organization’s reach and expertise, both organizations improved. More importantly, our partnership empowered young people to find joy and fulfillment in writing. fered to Goddard participants but feared that her staff would reject the idea that their participants would want to write as part of an afterschool program. Our willingness to take a risk to trust each other called upon the same resilience we were expecting of young people. We ask program participants to trust both our staff and their own abilities so they can push themselves to engage in writing. We decided to trust each other, our staffs, and the abilities of both nonprofits. Goddard Riverside brought to the partnership a Taking a Risk multi-decade history of youth work and embedded In Emergent Strategy, adrienne maree brown (2017) ness in the community. Writopia Lab brought a socialchallenges people to create, on the smallest level, what emotional approach to teaching writing that had, for they wish to see in the larger society. For us, that meant more than a decade, transformed thousands of reluctaking the risk to trust each other so we could build tant writers into enthusiastic ones. Both organizations robust, far-reaching youth literacy programming—to- brought a culture of inquiry for program improvement. gether. Writopia Lab was already running writing workshops Goddard Riverside, where Susan is deputy execu- at several Goddard sites; nearly 30 participants had tive director, is a large, holistic, multiservice agency been ignited by a love of writing anything from short with decades of broad and deep reach into under- stories and graphic novels to college

FAQs

Why is the partnership focused on improving literacy through writing?

The essay argues that many young people are reluctant to read and write, and that systemic gaps deepen reluctance, widening skills differences. Partnering is presented as a way to turn writing into an empowering, joyful practice.

What motivates the collaboration between the two nonprofits?

Both organizations bring overlapping missions and a shared vision rooted in radical empathy, supported by a steady funder. Their willingness to take risks to trust each other and their expertise is central to the model.

How does the partnership seek to expand beyond one community?

It emphasizes codifying, replicating, and evaluating the partnership model to institutionalize a positive literacy culture. The goal is to influence the broader youth development field.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by McQueen