826 Valencia is a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting under-resourced students ages six to eighteen with their creative and expository writing skills and to helping teachers inspire their students to write.
The brilliant build team behind our Tenderloin Center, INTERSTICE Architects, Jonas Kellner, MKThink, Gensler, BCCI Construction, OFFICE, Tipping Structural Engineers, GLUMAC, and Project Manager Valerie Veronin were given a special commendation in the category of Social Responsibility for their incredible work on our second writing lab.
Our incredible collaborators in the design of our Tenderloin center won an award! Thanks so much to Gensler, MKThink, INSTERSTICE Architects, and Office for their work.
“826 isn’t diving into the neighborhood blindly. Staff members and volunteers spent the past year working with Tenderloin children alongside established local organizations, like De Marillac Academy, the Boys & Girls Club Tenderloin Clubhouse, Glide Family Services, the Tenderloin Community School, and Bessie Carmichael Elementary School in SoMa.
“‘King Carl is a pufferfish, a traveling royal pufferfish, who opened a store in the Tenderloin and he sells the wares from his travels here,’ said Bita Nazarian, the Executive Director of 826 Valencia, a literary program for children that started in the Mission District and is expanding to a storefront and new tutoring center in the Tenderloin.