Eggers, an author and Pulitzer Prize finalist, founded nonprofit 826 Valencia in 2002 along with educator Nínive Calegari to make writing easier for a specific population: kids. More specifically, kids who come from under-resourced backgrounds.
It all started on 826 Valencia Street in San Francisco’s Mission District. The San Francisco Unified School District contains some of the highest-performing public schools in California, but also contains the widest gaps in performance among its students.
For many of the community’s students of color, English is not their first language. And yet it’s hardly an insight to say that English literacy is a key indicator of their future opportunities. Eggers and Calegari’s goal is to help students and their overburdened teachers by providing writing programs in the city’s areas of need. Their centers are known for their whimsical and inviting atmosphere, with unusual storefronts like the original Pirate Supply Store, where you can pick up a peg leg or a student publication.
“We are supporters of the public schools, and almost all our work is with the public schools,” Eggers told The Washington Post in a 2018 interview. “For our after-school tutoring, we work to support the students’ teachers’ lesson plans. In addition, we offer extracurricular writing opportunities, from book publishing to podcasts. When it comes to the students’ abilities with grammar, it is as varied as the students themselves.”