PRH Schoolyard: Mighty Writers

"Do you need to run around the block five times to get that energy out?" Rachel Loeper asks a young boy standing on the front step.

Loeper is the program director of Mighty Writers, a non-profit that aims to improve the writing skills of students ages 5 to 17. The young boy to whom she speaks is one of 50 students enrolled. Like most of his peers and Loeper herself, the young writer is a bundle of energy.

According to Loeper, she started holding meet and greets with people interested in starting a project like Dave Egger's 826 Valencia, a writing center that helps students ages 8-18 develop writing skills. In the meantime, Loeper quit her job in educational technology and took a position substitute teaching at Universal Institute Charter School in South Philadelphia.

That's when someone handed her Tim Whitaker's business card. Whitaker, a former editor of Philadelphia Weekly, was looking to start a similar project. The two met "and talked for about two weeks straight and eventually just kind of merged our forces," Loeper says, sitting at a table in the reception area at the Mighty Writers headquarters.

At the time, Loeper had between 50 and 100 volunteers signed on when Universal Institute, through its parent organization Universal Companies, offered Loeper the 1501 Christian Street storefront that was once the location for an "Obama for President" effort.

"Tim had funding for a year and a board of directors and a logo that I loved and we just took off running. So after meeting in April, we opened July 1st. We had 12 workshops last summer and then the after-school workshop started in the fall," Loeper says.

Mighty Writers is open Monday through Thursday from 3 to 6 pm for the after-school program, during which kids do homework before opening their red folders and working on their writing. On Sundays from 3 to 6 pm, Mighty Writers is open for tutoring and the community is welcome to walk in.

There are also workshops, hosted after 6 pm on weekdays and between 1 and 4 pm on Sundays. These workshops include "Graphic Memoirs," "Writing Like a Ninja" and "Girl Power Poetry."

Now, Loeper says the hope is to expand with a second location in West Philly. The group is always looking for people who want to join the list of 300 volunteers or who want to teach workshops to some talented students and community members.


This article appeared in Philadelphia RowHome Magazine's April/May/June 2010 issue (Vol. 8, Issue 18) in the PRH Schoolyard section.