Streetside Stories

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.

At Streetside Stories, we believe in the following values -

Respect: We create safe learning communities where all stories are honored and appreciated.
Confidence: We help young people value their voices and gain deeper understanding of themselves, fostering confidence as a way of life.
Creativity: We facilitate arts experiences that help young people express themselves and ask important life questions.
Diversity: We recognize unity built on a broad range of perspectives and celebrate diversity through storytelling.
Collaboration: We maximize our impact by fostering strong partnerships in the community and the classroom.
Social Justice: We believe educational equity is a vehicle to engage young people to tell their stories and strengthen their communities.

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, theater, 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 program, the Storytelling Exchange, in San Francisco public school classrooms. During that first year, Streetside served 60 students in three schools.

Since then, Streetside has helped over 12,000 students engage with learning by sharing their life stories. We offer
high-quality literacy arts education programs to schools and after school programs, community-based organizations and to educators. While Streetside services are available to a broad array of schools and community organizations, we focus our resources on reaching underserved young people who attend struggling schools.

» The Storytelling Exchange uses storytelling and theater to inspire 6th graders to tell their own stories and build lasting literacy skills.

» Streetside Community Programs brings theater, storytelling and literacy into the after school hours, helping students from elementary to high school to write, share and perform their personal stories.

» Tech Tales is a media arts and literacy program that helps middle school students write stories about their lives, then transform them into short movies.

» Teachers Edge is a collaboration between Streetside and Aspire Public Schools helping 5th-8th grade teachers integrate digital storytelling into their own classrooms.

» Each month we host an introductory event for those interested in volunteering or simply learning more about Streetside Stories. Tell It Like It Is! is free, fun, and just one hour long. Join us for refreshments, stories and the facts about Streetside.

»Raising Voices
Wednesday, November 10, 2010; 8-9am at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco.
Join us for Raising Voices: A Breakfast to Benefit Streetside.
To RSVP: call (415) 864-5221, or email beverly@streetside.org.

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Streetside Stories Mailing Parties

A great volunteer opportunity for corporate groups,

PTAs, sororities/fraternities, or just a group of friends!

Help us put together our annual appeals and newsletter mailing that goes out to over 2,000 of our supporters and donors!  Come by for a few hours and join a group of friendly folks who will help fold paper, stick on labels, and stuff envelopes.   We hold Mailing Parties everyday for an entire week to get the job done, and we couldn't do it without the help of our volunteer groups.

When:

- October 25-29th, 2010

- November 15-19th, 2010

*Days and times are flexible depending on the availability of your group.

Where: Streetside's office in San Francisco's Mission District, 3130 20th St, Suite 311, San Francisco, CA 94110.

About Streetside Stories:
Streetside Stories is a San Francisco-based literacy arts nonprofit that has helped over 14,000 students to share their life stories, connect with the arts, and improve their literacy skills.  Our programs use storytelling, writing, visual and media arts, theater and digital technology to build community and inspire young people to write and share their autobiographical stories.  Streetside’s programs focus on students who need our help the most. The majority of the students we serve live in low-income families and face barriers to literacy. Over one third of our students are English language learners.

Other Event Info: Pizza and drinks will be provided.  We’ll also tell you a bit about Streetside’s programs, and show you some sample student stories and movies!

In the past we've worked with these companies and community orgs:
- Salesforce
- United Way
- Genentech
- The Arc SF
- One Brick

- Julia Morgan School for Girls

- Premier Retail Network

- The Volunteer Center

Contact: Gina Rosales, Outreach Associate, gina [at] streetside [dot] org