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Pongo Publishing 

Description

The majority of Pongo's young writers have suffered early childhood trauma, such as abuse and neglect. Our authors often have severe emotional problems, low self-esteem, and difficulty expressing themselves. However, Pongo has developed its own therapeutic teaching approach, and we are highly successful at helping our authors write about their lives in a way that promotes insight and healing. One of the great features of Pongo is that we go to the teens who need our services the most -- inside homeless shelters, juvenile detention centers, state psychiatric hospital, etc.

Mission Statement

The Pongo Teen Writing Project teaches abused and neglected teens to write personal poetry. Our work has three purposes: First, we help the teens to understand their feelings, build their self-esteem, and take better control of their lives; Second, we help the community to understand the familial and social conditions that affect these youths; Third, we support established charities and agencies whose work benefits these young people.

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Pongo Publishing
2701 California Ave SW Ste 155 
Seattle 
WA
98116-2405 
(206) 937-0409 

Richard Gold 
Executive Director 

Programs

Pongo Publishing Programs

Pongo is a fourteen-year-old nonprofit. From 2000-2008 alone, we have conducted 1,600 individual sessions, 200 group sessions, and worked with over 4,000 teens to help them write therapeutically about their difficult life experiences. We are currently in our tenth year of working at King County juvenile detention and our seventh year at Child Study and Treatment Center, the state psychiatric hospital for children. Other Pongo sites include Orion Center (homeless youth), Treehouse (foster youth), Echo Glen (youth in juvenile rehab), and Lambert House(LGBT youth).

Pongo has professionally produced twelve books of poetry by its teen authors, and has distributed 12,000 of these books for free to distressed youth and also to libraries, judges, and agencies.

At book fairs and conferences over 14 years, Pongo has talked to 10,000 people in the community about distressed youth. Pongo has exhibited at Bumbershoot Arts Festival for 14 years. We are a sponsor of Folklife Festival. We have appeared at Burning Word, WordStock, and other festivals.

Recent Successes and Current Challenges

Pongo has recently been featured in the following journals and radio shows (among others!):

Pongo is launching a new website which will allow abused and neglected teens from anywhere to write poetry online. We are looking for support to expand the reach and impact of our new site. The featured writing activities on the site have been developed by Pongo over a number of years, to serve the emotional needs of our authors. The web site will include teaching information and writing activities for teachers and counselors to download and use.

Evaluation

Current evaluation not available

Grant History with The Seattle Foundation:

Grants Awarded through The Seattle Foundation Grantmaking Program:

DateAmountPurpose
10/18/2007 $3,000.00support general operating expenses.

Financials

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