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Streetside Stories – how a great literacy program goes to scale by using Facebook Causes

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Posted in Action in Education!, Education Programs, Learning, New Media, North America, Organisation, Stories

Streetside Stories – how a great literacy program goes to scale by using Facebook Causes

Streetside Stories, a literacy arts non-profit in San Francisco has helped over 14,000 students to share their life stories, connect with arts, and improve their literacy skills. Over 2,000 students were supported in 2009 – 10 with the innovative literacy arts programmes; including both in-school and afterschool programmes.
Nupur Sachdeva for Youth-Leader India
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Through the power of storytelling, Streetside Stories cultivates young people’s voices to develop literacy and arts skills, fosters educational equity, values diversity, and builds community.
The organisation has recently added a new dimension to volunteering by launching their cause on Facebook ‘Causes’. Their cause named “ALL Young People Deserve To Have Their Stories Heard”, has involved a number of online volunteers, who have proved to be a great asset!
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“I AM”
I am a daughter of two Mexicans
I am like the sun and the sunset
I am the divider of the moon and the sun
I am the fence between dogs and cats
My halves are like water and fire
I’m like the moon on one side
And the sun on the other
One side is sweet like strawberries
And the other rotten mangoes
Marina A., California
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The genesis
Eighteen years ago, brothers Seth and James Levy kicked off the first of two cross-country “Rides for Reading.” To promote reading and writing, they rode their bicycles cross-country, sharing storytelling, theatre, and creative writing with groups of youth along the way. After their second ride, the brothers moved to San Francisco. They established Streetside Stories in San Francisco in 1990 and began offering Streetside’s flagship programme, the Storytelling Exchange, in San Francisco public school classrooms. During that first year, Streetside served 60 students in three schools.
65% of the students belong to low-income family, 60% score below the basic level on literacy tests, and 30% of the students are English Language Learners as English being their second language.  Streetside Stories fosters a safe environment where students develop their voices, take risks and become empowered truth-tellers.
Streetside offers seven nationally recognized programmes that serve students throughout the Bay Area, with a focus on San Francisco and Alameda counties. Their programmes use storytelling, writing, theatre, poetry, visual and media arts and digital technology to help students improve their reading, writing and oral communication skills.
A beautiful anthology of student stories, as well as a DVD with digital stories / movies created by the students is produced at the end of each year. Every student in the programmes gets a copy of the anthology. These are also distributed at public and school libraries and at local independent bookstores.
“Streetside Stories has helped me let my feelings flow through stories and poetry.  I can truly say that it was a highlight of my middle school years”, reminisces Zaria Clemmons, Streetside Youth Advisory Board member and programme alumni.
Students have benefited a lot from these programmes. They have started getting higher literacy test scores, demonstrate better spoken communication skills, are more engaged and participatory in class and report greater comfort and skill with technology.
“Streetside has helped struggling students realise that their stories are worth sharing”, expresses Amy Busch, James Denman Middle School.
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Streetside’s Volunteers: a great asset
Streetside has an enormous engagement of volunteers who inspire students to write the stories of their lives. The volunteers help students with writing, basic film editing and facilitating small group discussions. They also help students in creating digital stories from their written stories by helping with storyboarding, scanning images, typing scripts and editing with iMovie.
Volunteers play a crucial role with Streetside’s functioning as a non-profit. In 2009 – 10, Streetside engaged 215 volunteers who helped in fundraising, outreach, media, general office work and translate students’ work, permission slips and programme contracts.
“I have personally witnessed the success that youth experience through the Streetside programmes and the validation given to their voices and life stories. I feel that I have a part to play in creating those changes”, says a determined Streetside volunteer.
Gina Rosales, the Outreach Associate at Streetside Stories liaisons between Streetside Stories and the volunteers and community partners. She engages and recruits volunteers, develops strategic community partnerships, produces the annual student anthology as well as produces various other community outreach events.
“We can’t do our work without the help of volunteers, and we’re extremely appreciative of all our community and corporate partners”, says pleased Gina.
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Facebook: a new approach
Gina’s profile as an Outreach Associate required her to establish Streetside’s presence on Facebook. After doing much research on Facebook strategies for non-profits, she came across a workshop that was being put on by the Facebook ‘Causes’ team at their local office in Berkeley. She decided to attend, and this is where she learned about all the great ways that ‘Causes’ can help non-profits promote their causes and gain support online throughout the world. It was really convincing that putting time into ‘Causes’ was going to be more beneficial than just doing a Fan Page alone.
Streetside then started a “Causes Team” which initiated the recruitment of online volunteers. Online volunteers who join the “Causes Team” act as global ambassadors for the cause. The main tasks of the online volunteers are to promote the cause by inviting people to join, fundraise or simply share Streetside news with their friends through their Facebook profile.
“I think the concept of Streetside Stories is awesome! While I have just recently begun to help them online, the real work is where the team engages students in telling their own stories and learning from those. Being a story teller and a story lover myself, I really hope they would come to India so that I can be a part of this amazing concept, more actively!!”, says a passionate online volunteer Samarpita Mukherjee-Sharma, who has been online volunteering for Streetside from India.
409 people have joined the Streetside cause on Facebook since July 2010 and $ 275 Dollars have been raised to fund their projects.
Gina expresses her gratitude to all the online volunteers, “Having ambassadors all over the world who can help to spread this important message, as well as increase visibility for Streetside Stories as a leading non-profit literacy arts organisation is a great asset and the organisation is extremely thankful to our many supporters.”
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Streetside: a Model for After School Education or ‘Fundraising for Sustainability’
Streetside also believes in the importance of sequential programming so that the students don’t just get access to arts education once in their school career. They want to reach students several times throughout their school careers to enable students to benefit from its unique approach. Art projects are crucial to their curriculum because they allow the students to think out of the box and express their ideas in a creative way.
“Streetside Stories is one of the most motivating, inspirational tools we have for children’s success in school, belief in their future, and self-esteem”, claims a Public School Administrator.
The only challenge is that many schools are experiencing budget cuts and don’t have the appropriate funding for arts education providers. The Facebook ‘Causes’ page plays a crucial role here as it serves as a medium to raise funds so that they can educate people on the importance of arts education for young people. A fundraising project was recently started on Facebook ‘Causes’ to buy arts supplies for Streetside youth.
The team of Streetside has been working passionately in achieving their goals, and this hard work has shown many fruitful results. Streetside has been recognised five times as a national model for arts education by the U.S. Department of Education. It has been recognised as a leader in arts education by the National Endowment for the Arts and the California Arts Council. The City of San Francisco has recognised Streetside as a model for after school education.
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‘Causes’ – Be empowered!
Facebook ‘Causes’ was founded on the belief that in a healthy society, anyone can participate in change by informing and inspiring others. A cause is an online community of people who care about the same issue or non-profit and want to accomplish one or more goals. A cause might be created by a concerned citizen, seasoned activist, or non-profit employee. It can be used to raise awareness, advocate, educate, and / or fundraise.
‘Causes’ is the world’s largest platform for activism and philanthropy with 119 million ‘Causes’ members and $ 27 million raised for 27,000 non-profits. They empower users to create grassroots communities, called ‘Causes’ that take action on behalf of a specific issue or non-profit organisation. Most non-profits we work with have dozens of causes supporting them, and in all there are 350,000 causes on Facebook. Each cause includes features for communications, such as bulletins and a media board, as well as the ability to feature specific fundraising and advocacy campaigns.
Anyone can create a user-created advocacy group on Causes. This group, called a ‘cause’ is the building block for all activity on the site. Causes created by non-profits and causes created by concerned individuals share the same level-playing field. Cause administrators can post announcements to the cause and communicate with members through email and Facebook notifications. Members can discuss the issues, share their experiences, post media, and sign petitions. Causes can choose whether or not to fundraise by selecting a beneficiary organisation to receive donations. These donations are automatically delivered monthly.
‘Causes’ empowers anyone with a good idea or passion for change to impact the world. Using this platform, individuals mobilise their network of friends to grow lasting social and political movements.
A cause can spread awareness to a new demographic, teach users how to make changes in their daily lives, raise money to reach important goals or encourage people to share personal stories and find support.
Whether you are an activist or a non-profit, ‘Causes’ can be your platform. It is a tool to help people go from caring about issues to doing something to make change. Anyone can change the world. What about you?
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Your guide to ‘Causes’
Starting a cause on Facebook ‘Causes’ is really simple. You can follow these easy guidelines to start your own cause.
Start a cause: If your organisation does not have a cause set up yet, go to the ‘Causes’ application through Facebook or by going to www.causes.com. Under “Find Causes” at the top of the page, click “Start a Cause.” Starting a cause is easy and quick – just enter in the information and select your non-profit as the beneficiary of the cause from our database.
Build a group of supporters: After your cause is created, you will need to start involving your friends and promoting it to your network of supporters. Start by involving your network of friends, family members and co-workers. Provide incentives for the person who recruits the most people to the cause.
Promote the cause: Mention the cause in your monthly newsletter, on your website or in an email to your mailing list. You can post to your wall or set your status message with information and a link for the cause. This is posted to your friends’ news feeds, letting even more people know about the cause.
Start fundraising: Set up a fundraising campaign in the Non-profit Partner Centre. You can focus the fundraising campaign on tangible and impactful goals that will help your cause members understand why you need their support! Anyone, with or without a Facebook profile, can donate to your cause. The donations will be sent to your non-profit once per month our non-profit processing partner, Network for Good (http://www1.networkforgood.org). Every cause that lists your non-profit as its beneficiary, by default, features your general fundraising campaign. If your non-profit is a partner, this campaign displays your non-profit’s name, mission, and logo with a “Donate” button.
Sign up as a Non-profit Partner: As a Non-profit Partner, you will have access to the Partner Centre, where you can find tools specifically designed for non-profits. Sign up and log into your account at https://nonprofits.causes.com/session/new.
To learn more, go to http://exchange.causes.com/resources/
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Resources
Streetside Website: http://streetside.org
Youtube Page: http://www.youtube.com/streetsidestoriessf
Streetside Causes Page: http://www.causes.com/causes/510308
Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/streetsidestories
Causes Page: http://www.facebook.com/causes
Causes Website: http://www.causes.com
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Nupur Sachdeva is a graduate in Mass Communication & Journalism with a post graduate in English Literature. Nupur likes traveling and has worked as a news coordinator with Thomson Reuters and currently with the British Council. She strongly believes that quality education can bring a massive change to society.

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One Response to “Streetside Stories – how a great literacy program goes to scale by using Facebook Causes”

  1. Gina R. says:
    November 29, 2010 at 7:00 pm

    Thanks so much for featuring Streetside on Youth Leader! Hopefully everyone who reads will join our cause and support literacy arts for youth!

    -Gina R. = )

    reply

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