United States
WRITING CHANGE Celebrates a Year of Impact
Company Feature, Dec 21, 2023
“Literacy is your voice. It’s your lungs screaming everything your heart wants to say, and everything your mind really feels. It’s an opportunity to see and be seen, to take refuge and to shelter others, to create and to observe what is exceedingly beautiful.” – Sanya Afsar, Mentee, Girls Write Now
Reading and writing are crucial for personal growth, economic prosperity, and social well-being. But more than 773 million children and adults worldwide face literacy challenges, most of whom are girls and women. With this in mind, in 2022, The Estée Lauder Companies (ELC) joined forces with Amanda Gorman, Estée Lauder Global Changemaker and the inspiration behind WRITING CHANGE, to put power into action by uniting our global platforms to launch a $3 million literacy initiative supporting and amplifying organizations that promote literacy as a pathway to equality, access, and social change. As we celebrate this initiative's meaningful work in 2023, we reflect on our successful commitment and mark our progress towards creating a lasting impact on the world.
In 2023, WRITING CHANGE continued to advance ELC’s goal to drive social impact and activate a shift in the existing inequalities of literacy access and amplifying opportunities through advocacy. Over the past year, the WRITING CHANGE initiative demonstrated its dedication to underrepresented and underserved communities, particularly those of women and girls. The initiative included the inaugural grantee organizations: We Need Diverse Books, a non-profit promoting literacy and diversity; WriteGirl, a mentoring organization that encourages creativity and empowerment for girls and gender-expansive youth; MIGIZI, a Minnesota-based initiative for the educational and cultural development of American Indian youth; Girls Write Now, a national organization focusing on mentorship, community-building, and creative expression; and the American Library Association (ALA), a library association providing leadership for the development and promotion of library services and librarianship.
The path to impact began with convening fellow grantees to share current goals and challenges, discuss pressing topics such as imposter syndrome, and create exciting collaborative opportunities. Anchored by the 3 pillars of WRITING CHANGE— advancing literacy access, advocating for representation in literature, and fostering artistic expression in youth—the collective continued to establish success within each organization throughout the year in support of aspiring young writers worldwide.
Advancing Literary Access
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WriteGirl provided year-round creative writing workshops, mentoring, publishing opportunities, and college entrance guidance to 500 youth and young adults, demonstrating improved writing skills and confidence. The organization also enrolled underserved youth throughout the Los Angeles region, as well as teens from across the United States and internationally, matching teen girls from Kenya, Poland, and Uruguay with their own weekly mentor. Programming included creative writing workshops for more than 100 youth in Central Asia, Tajikistan, Uganda, North Las Vegas, and Wisconsin.
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ALA’s Civic Imagination Station program brought together a cohort of 12 libraries and local artists nationwide to implement short-term arts-based projects that engaged residents, built traditional and digital literacies, and elevated representation of cultural communities
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Girls Write Now served 600 combined young mentees and mentors —woman-identifying, transgender, and gender expansive—from systemically underserved communities worldwide, including 30 U.S. states.
Advocacy for Representation in Literature
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We Need Diverse Books (WNDB) served Native writers, Black writers, and students nationwide through grants, mentorships, workshops, author visits, and book giveaways. The organization sent more than 600 books by Native and Black authors to educators across 13 states, prioritizing low-income schools that don't often have diverse books that reflect their students' lives. WNDB also organized 6 school visits with Black and Native authors that encouraged literacy, sparked storytelling, and served nearly 1,200 students.
Artistic Expression in Youth
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The MIGIZI Speaks program brought together 15 American- Indian girls with the purpose of creating a sisterhood of scholars to safely explore the epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women/Relatives (MMIW/R) and to develop stories in various forms of expression to raise awareness of the epidemic. Four youth cohorts in grades 9-12 completed various media storytelling projects, including short videos and podcasts.
As ELC’s Global Changemaker, Amanda brought her thought leadership to convenings nationwide, escalating conversations that support equality and social change. At a time when the power of words affects the pages of our history and future, ELC acknowledges the importance of empowering the voices of today and tomorrow and is committed to ensuring that access to literature remains equitable.
ELC is incredibly proud of the initiative’s momentum, proving our capacity to fuel change through intentional community-building. In collaboration with our partners, we’ve learned just how pivotal the desire for this community to connect can be in making powerful changes in our society. We have also learned that the multi-faceted approach to addressing access, new work, and community programming is greatly needed. Most importantly, we have strengthened our impact as we continue to accelerate our goals toward equality in literacy.
Learn more about our commitment to social impact.
