Make a difference for Teachers. Make a difference for Kids.

NEW STRETCH GOAL OF $8000

We reached our initial goal and are now trying to raise more money to support more teachers. Every $1000 will be put towards another teacher stipend. Let's see how many teachers we can support!

Thank you to all of the wonderful donors who have helped us reach our goal! We are extremely grateful for your support!

The BAY AREA WRITING PROJECT (BAWP), based at the University of California, Berkeley, is an organization of, by, and for teachers of writing at all grade levels and in all disciplines, dedicated to improving the teaching and uses of writing through a variety of programs–both on the university campus and in Bay Area schools. Every day these committed, excellent teachers are making a difference in the lives of students.

BAWP’s Invitational Summer Institute is one of the ways we invest in educators to help them further develop their teaching skills. The institutes engage teachers in writing, developing and sharing demonstrations of their teaching practice, and creating knowledge in critical areas such as serving the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse student populations. These leadership opportunities equip teachers to lead work in their schools and districts, and in the larger community of Bay Area educators seeking to realize equitable outcomes for all students. Each summer our Invitational Summer Institute supports the learning of twenty teaching fellows, whose work directly impacts an average of 1,700 students.

With your help, we would like to raise money to support local teachers to participate in the Invitational Summer Institute. Increased financial resources will strengthen our efforts to recruit and continue to support more teachers of color and teachers serving socio-economically disadvantaged populations. We seek to provide stipends of $1,000 for each of twenty teacher fellows participating in our intensive four-week institute. In the midst of the skyrocketing cost of living in the Bay Area and the increasing necessity for teachers to secure summer employment, stipends help make this learning opportunity accessible to more teachers. Stipends honor teachers’ time commitment to learning and help defray transportation and childcare costs.  Our $5,000 goal would pay for five of the stipends for teachers to attend the summer institute.

The federal grants that formerly supported our Invitational Summer Institutes have disappeared.  Our state funding sources were cut, and more cuts are always a threat.  We are lucky to have the solid support of Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education, but we must nevertheless actively and constantly seek outside sources of funding to sustain our vibrant network of dedicated teachers, our continuity of programs and our scholarships to deserving students to participate in our summer writing workshops. 

No gift is too small! With your help -- or the help of people you may know who are looking for a cause worthy of their donation dollars -- we can continue offering the intensive summer writing experiences that our teachers recall so passionately.

No one knows better than Writing Project teachers that writing has the power to transform lives, create deeper learning, and connect us to the world's collective knowledge. And no one knows better than Writing Project teachers that the commitment to writing is only the start of a long journey toward real and sustainable educational change.