Barbara Brown (she/her) is one of our passionate volunteer facilitators and in the fall she facilitated our first writing group for 4th and 5th graders. The program was hosted in collaboration with IRCO (Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization) at Menlo Park Elementary in Northeast Portland.
Barbara moved to Portland in 2024 and discovered Write Around Portland through Willamette Week’s Give!Guide. Shortly thereafter, Barbara took on her first office volunteer shift. “I felt very welcomed,” said Barbara.
Barbara has years of experience with teaching creative writing and English to refugees and immigrants and was inspired by how much it meant to her students to discover how to express themselves.
“When you teach someone how to express themself and then they do, and they are so excited about it, you are both thrilled (and the world is a little richer with their voice),” she said.
Barbara brought this excitement to the writing group at Menlo Park Elementary where she worked with a group of six 4th and 5th graders in an afterschool program.
Once she was formally vetted, Barbara went to the school weekly on Wednesdays to write with the students after they had a quick snack and a short recess. Through their weeks together, Barbara saw incredible transformations in her students: one girl who knew from the start she was a writer, another who discovered her talent by week three and couldn’t stop creating, a boy who invented his own recurring character, and another who found the courage to express his loneliness. Even the students who struggled initially produced short stories full of humor and heart.
At the end of their time together, each of the students submitted their writing for publication in the anthology I Was Always There, and two of them read their pieces in front of an audience at the Winter Reading & Book Release and really delighted the crowd!
Barbara says that through volunteering with Write Around Portland she was able to find a group of people who resonated with her and helped her build her connections here in Portland. “Write Around Portland takes care of the people who cross their threshold,” she remarked.