The Writers' Exchange
#207 - 877 East Hastings Street V6A 1R8 Vancouver, BC, Canada

If you’re a fan of gelato, we’ve got a cool story highlight for you! This story is from the chapbook Things You Should Know.

Happy Lunar New Year today we set up a walk-through, socially distanced event to celebrate with the kids and their families!

One of the kids made this useful guide to the colours We hope everyone has a *yellow* day!

The kids wrote a total of 10 books during our 2019-2020 programs! Not only are they the authors, but the kids also came up with the snappy titles and the cool themes for the cover art

Looking for a sour snack that’s 100% good for teeth? If yes, one of the kids invented the perfect treat for you!

Here is a story highlight from one of our chapbooks. The kids write so many fun, creative, and exciting stories, and so we wanted to start sharing some of their hard work! If you want to read more stories, we’ve got loads of chapbooks on our website.

Thank you to the wonderful folks at Massy Books for their support of BWSS Battered Women's Support Services and The Writers' Exchange! Enter the raffle today!

We love these snazzy designs from our amazing pals at Monday Creative Inc! <3

It's chocolate everything with chocolate ice cream, chocolate swirls AND chocolate sprinkles! Kaboom! Get a scoop of this limited-edition kid-created ice cream flavour at Rain or Shine Ice Cream in celebration of their 7th birthday while supporting our programs at The Writers' Exchange!

Rise and shine!! Start the day off with this smoky, sweet, salty and satisfying ice cream breakfast combo, which you can pick up at Rain or Shine Ice Cream. You'll be supporting the kids of The Writers' Exchange while you're at it!

We’re hiring a Senior Manager, Youth Programs! The Writers' Exchange is looking for an excellent project manager to plan, grow, and implement the delivery of fun and engaging literacy programs for high-school aged youth. The candidate will lead our team of staff, supervise volunteer Literacy Mentors, and collaborate with schools, community partners, and stakeholders to deliver high-quality, engaging, and supportive programs. ... Application deadline for this role is Oct 29, so if you’re interested, apply ASAP! https://vancouverwe.com/were-hiring

The kids of WE have recreated that simple joy of snack time with roasted Abbotsford apples paired with tasty shredded cheese from Birchwood Dairy! Super healthy and tastes GRATE too! Get this limited-time flavour now at Rain or Shine Ice Cream in support of The Writers' Exchange!

Chocolate? Fruit? Why not both! Take a field trip to our friends at Rain or Shine Ice Cream to try this chunky, fudgy, and fruity delight, created by the kids of The Writers' Exchange! The kids have invented a whole batch of cool, creamy, and creative ice cream flavours for November, and Rain or Shine is donating 25% of the purchases of these limited-edition pints to The Writers’ Exchange. ... So treat yourself this month while supporting the kids of WE!

This is what volunteer mentorship looks like now! Our volunteers are still making a huge impact by being there for the kids in a different way.

New month, new look! The amazingly talented and long-time The Writers' Exchange volunteer Hiller Goodspeed designed our great new logo! We think the design is as fun and energetic as the kids themselves. WE love it!

Our friends at Massy Books are running a 50/50 Fundraiser in support of BWSS Battered Women's Support Services and The Writers' Exchange. You could win up to $10,000 in the raffle draw while supporting two great local organizations! Get your tickets at Massy Books and online at massybooks.com/fundraiser from now until December 16th! Must be 19+ and a B.C. resident to play!

We asked the kids to tell us what they’d like to see in the new spaces Low Tide Properties has given us access to during these socially distanced times. Because who wouldn’t want a museum, swimming pool and free candy store all in the same place?!

It’s full steam ahead for the fall termwith engines set to SAFE! We’ve added three new locations so we can help the same number of kids while leaving plenty of room for social distancing, and we're "bubbling" kids from the same schools and families. Our volunteer mentors are still beaming in by tablet only, so our amazing program leaders and their support teams are working both smart and hard to make sure the kids have plenty of fun activities, reading help and healthy sna...cks at every site. A few kids aren't able to come to in-person programs just yet, so we're also still doing some food and activity drop-offsand will for as long as needed. It’s going to be a big, big year, with more new programs and lots more news to comestay tuned!

This team (and Kathleen and Courtney who missed this photo op) worked so hard to deliver safe and fun programs for all the kids and youth we worked with this summer. We’re tipping our hats, giving a million air high-fives and a billion rounds of applause in celebration of them! They kept everyone feeling safe and made sure all the hand-washing, distancing and extra cleaning were done with big smiles. ... Now on to our fall programs!

We had so much fun at the water park where the current was swift and the wind was mighty! The pirate’s home. Going to treasure island. Carrying treasure.... Used for treasure hunting.

Our buds at Growing Chefs! and Fresh Roots Urban Farm Society connected us with the team from Ono Vancouver. They provide the kids in our programs with fresh, delicious and nutritious individually packed lunches and snacks. On today’s menu we have veggies and dip, mac and cheese and pita chips. These meals have been a huge hit with the kids. We’re very lucky to have such great partners who understand what the kids like and need!

We asked our community to offer up some extreme kindness for the kids of the Writers’ Exchange, and you really, really did it! With all of your generous donations over the last three weeks, we raised $240,200 for our COVID Kindness Fund! We’ve been monitoring our progress using a super-scientific pompom-based kindness tracking system. :) A whole bunch of kid-written kindness tips are in the mail, and our COVID Kindness Fund is already hard at work providing extra-level, pande...mic-ready support to under-resourced families in Vancouver. We want to give our deepest thanks to our supporters for helping us achieve this incredible result. We think you’re amazing and amazingly kind! <3 P.S. Our campaign is officially over, but if you’re that secret kindness angel who wants to give that last $9,800, the link is still live! https://vancouverwe.com/donate-literacy-programs

We’re almost there! We've reached 91% of our goal for our giant, super-important $250,000 COVID Kindness Fund. Our team has been super busy mailing out the paper jars of kindness we’re giving every donor, because there have been a lot to send. If you haven’t secured your own set of awesome kid-written kindness tips, donate to our Kindness Fund by this week. Hang them on your fridge, post them on your feed, or just keep them in your heart forever.... You’ll be helping kids feel supported, resilient and capableno matter what the world puts in their way. This is your very last chance, so act now! https://vancouverwe.com/donate-literacy-programs

We’ve been absolutely blown away by the response to our call for donations to The Writers' Exchange COVID Kindness Fund! Thanks to the amazing donors who have stepped up so far, we’ve already raised more than 70% of our humongous goal of $250,000! Your donations will help us adapt in any way we need so we can keep supporting kids and families in our community. When you donate, we’ll mail you your very own paper jar of kid-written kindness tips! ... If you’ve already received your jar or you know it’s on the way, help us spread the word! Let us know what was your favourite message. The kids worked hard on their messages of kindness, so let's share their advice far and wide! Donate what you can today - we appreciate your support! https://vancouverwe.com/donate-literacy-programs

In the months ahead, it’s going to take tons of resources to support The Writers' Exchange kids during one of the most critical times in their lives. That’s why we need to raise $250,000 to create a COVID Kindness Fund that will allow us to deliver the same programs we always have, but in new ways and for more kids. Just before the pandemic, the kids in our programs made their own jars of kindness, stuffed with amazing pro tips on how to be kind to yourself and others, such... as Go for it! You got this! and Share that peanut butter! These messages are so fun and inspiring that we want to share them with you! Help us establish our COVID Kindness Fund and we’ll mail you your very own paper Jar of Kindness. Every donation to the fund will give under-resourced kids access to fun, safe, and caring literacy programs outside of school, as long they need itthrough summer and over the school year ahead. Please consider giving what you can and let the kids show you a brand new way to be kind: https://vancouverwe.com/donate-literacy-programs

This list was made by one of the extremely thoughtful and smart 11 year-olds who come to our programs. We found it really inspiring and an anchor for the conversations we’ve been having around what we are going to do to become better at being an actively anti-racist organization. Core to our work is a belief in the importance of always listening to, sharing and amplifying the voices of the kids and youth we work with, most of who are BIPOC and all of who face multiple barrie...rs every day of their lives. We want the kids, youth and families we work with, our team of volunteer mentors, our community partners, donors, supporters and everyone in our community to know that we are committed to continually doing the work to be an anti-racist organization. One of our core values is to listen and to help. It means first we actively listen, and then we take action. We are listening. And we are right now creating a plan that will make us look at what we’ve been doing, examine where we’re at now and decide what we’ll be doing moving forward. We will be sharing it with all of you and inviting you to be a part of the work.

Check out the latest chapbook, Sea Creature Stories! The stories for this book were finished just before March. Thanks to our printing sponsor, Hemlock Printers Ltd. who continue to be amazing and safely working, we were still able to get our gloved hands on them! Thanks to MarameoLab, Melanie Kwan, and and Kristie Sparksman for the amazing design work! Read all the stories at https://issuu.com/writers_exchange/docs/sea_creature_stories

We couldn’t wait to share this awesome comic with you! We’re still delivering weekly activities and love seeing what the kids and their families do with them! During our weekly phone calls we make sure everyone knows that they can change the activities to suit their own likes and happily support the kids to do that! :)