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.
“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.
"The latest example that San Francisco’s Tenderloin is steadily improving comes today as the nationally acclaimed 826 Valencia writing program opens its Tenderloin Center."
After a year of construction, 300 hours of working with students in the Tenderloin through partner organizations, and incredible support from all of you, the 826 Valencia Tenderloin Center is open for business!
