CHAPTER 510 INK
546 9th Street, Oakland, CA 94607 www.chapter510.org

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Organizations Filed Purposes: Chapter 510 is a made-in-Oakland youth writing & publishing center. Our teaching artists and volunteers work side-by-side with educators to provide a safe space and supportive community for young people ages 6-18 to bravely write.

MetWest College Personal Statement Support & Identity In-School Book Project For the seventh consecutive year, Chapter 510 tutors worked in service to students at MetWest High School. Volunteers worked one-on-one with all graduating seniors to help them plan, draft, and finalize college application essays and scholarship applications from October through December. Chapter 510 also ran a year-long poetry program with 9th grader students led by award winning Oakland poet & teaching artists Darius Simpson and staff port Margie Chardiet. The program culminated in a published poetry anthology, If They Could See Our Minds, released in Oct. 2020. Open this book. Each one of these poems offers us its bravery and truth.Nikki GiovanniWestlake Writers Room + High School Readiness + Lunch Pop-up Program + 7 novels writtenOn Sept 19, Westlake students Marietou and Amina cut the ribbon on our very first Writers' Room. It was a beautiful night with inspiring words from Principal Taylor, our Founder and ED Janet Heller, poet Tongo Eisen-Martin, and MetWest student and poet Elijah Hynson.All year, students wrote with us nearly every day during lunch-time pop-ups and our novel-writing program. We also placed tutors in all 8th grade English classes and ran a high-school readiness after-school tutoring center three days per week.The room, though new, is already beloved to the Westlake community. Yeah, this is definitely the best room in this school, one 8th grade student said last week. The seven novels that were written will be released this coming year. Motherland: In-School Book Project at Hoover ElementaryOver the course of 6 weeks, third graders from Hoover Elementary in West Oakland defined the word motherland through poetry. Led by poet & Teaching Artist Perla Yasmeen Melndez, these students turned open hearts to the placesand peoplethey call home. What came forth were poems of memory, comfort, grief and delight. Beautifully complicating the ubiquitous question Where are you from?, this book is a resonant anthology of truths. The program culminated in a English-Spanish translated, hand-made, letterpressed accordion-style book that is just as beautiful as the poetry it contains. Write Your Roots Epic Poetry ProjectOver the course of two legendary days in fall of 2019 and spring of 2020, Chapter 510 invited Oakland residents of all ages to put pen to page and write poetry about motherlands, superpowers, growth, and love. In partnership with Oakland Roots Sports Club and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, we spun every submission into one collaborative work of art. This voluminous poem rose up from the roots of Oakland and now lives in a book entitled Because This City which is available for free to all as a download or through our online store. "You don't know where you are going if you don't know where your roots are from. This book reminds me of my own roots." Jonathan "JonnyX Orozco, Oakland Roots #98Beauty in DifferenceSWANA- & MUSLIM-IDENTIFIED TEENSChapter 510s third-annual Beauty in Difference poetry workshop held space for SWANA- and Muslim-identified teens . Participants spent ten Saturday afternoons over the winter working with poet Sarah ONeall. The result of this work is a celebration of their poetry in a collection published by our partner Nomadic Press entitled Behind Our Names. Behind Our Names is a collection of poetry that deep dives into self discovery by asking difficult questions about family, community, and the histories that sculpt us. The poems within resist definition and earnestly ask the reader to listen in more complicated, attentive, and nuanced ways as the authors grapple with the complexity of cultural identity and self identification. This is a love letter to the places we call homethe places we have leftin order to reclaim and rename ourselves.Shelter in Place Writing ResourcesChapter 50 spent April, May & June running many programs for youth in Oakland through Zoom and social media platforms. Though we have to cancel all our in-person field trips and workshops for most of the spring, hundreds of students still wrote with us through SIP. We held a weekly middle-school writing workshop Word Up, a weekly teen workshop (led by Maddy Clifford) Words Like a Charm, and a six-week bookmaking workshop for 3rd-5th graders (led by Perla Yasmeen Melndez)all through Zoom! During April, we also prompted our kids and teens to write with us for PEDA (Poem Every Day in April) through our social media platforms and held an all-day, all-Town poetry writing day on April 27, as well.

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