BRINK LITERACY PROJECT

EDUCATION Use our education programs to actively target underserved communities. This means developing programs specifically for the empowerment of low-literacy, low-income, and marginalized populations. For example, studies show that inmates who engage in literacy programs are 50% less likely to reoffend. Thus, after two years of preparation, Brink began teaching a graphic memoir course in the Denver Women’s Correctional Facility in the fall of 2017. Using comics as a way to engage reluctant readers, Brink helps students transform a single turning point in their lives into a short graphic memoir. Through this prison program, Brink strives to empower these students to take a hard look at their lives, assess past decisions, and set positive goals for the future. PUBLISHING Through publication of F(r)iction, our triannual literary journal, we: mentor emerging writers, encourage experimentation and genre-melding, provide a platform for underrepresented voices, and breath new life into the literary journal industry. With a focus on unusual, emerging, and experimental work, F(r)iction provides a platform for voices that are otherwise often rejected by the mainstream publishing industry. Underpinned by a mentorship ethos—facilitated by close ties to Brink’s Free Editing Program—F(r)iction has quickly become a platform for launching new careers and providing a space for unusual and emerging work, such as debut authors, graphic literature, and speculative content. Further, with the readership for literary journals dwindling every day, we want to breathe new life into the publishing industry by reinvigorating the entire reading experience. We commission custom, full-color illustrations for every piece published, creating a visual experience that is as stunning as the literature within. In addition, we publish a graphic short story in each issue, championing this medium as a serious and beautiful storytelling form. By publishing work from unique and unusual authors and artists, opening up the literary-journal experience to a wider readership, and showing that genre and experimental storytelling can be just as powerful as traditional literary work, we believe we can rejuvenate the industry. COMMUNITY Through our Community division, Brink has forged a network of partnerships with other humanitarian and literary organizations. In collaboration with these partners, we create innovative curriculum, build research teams, and offer hands-on teaching, editing, and outreach experience across the globe. Through F(r)iction, we spotlight work from community partners such as the Afghan Women’s Writing Project, Veterans Writing Project, Lambda Literary, PEN America, Words Without Walls, Writers Without Margins, and other phenomenal humanitarian programs, providing a platform for marginalized and underrepresented voices and highlighting individuals who write as a way to cope with difficult situations.

STAFF TEAM Brink is run by a dynamic team of experts and industry leaders, bringing together decades of diverse experience in education, literacy, writing, editing, publishing, and prison reform. Through dedicated departmental teams, we develop programs, launch initiatives, grow our publication's distribution and industry impact, and forge new partnerships. ADVISORS Brink is supported by a number of advisors and consultants who offer their expertise, advise, and experience to help us develop programs and make key structural, financial, and steering decisions. COMMUNITY SUPPORT Brink has developed a wide network of partnerships that offer varied skill sets, perspectives, and collaboration opportunities. These include partnering with: universities to develop research teams, other nonprofit organizations to spotlight work from marginalized communities and collaborate on curriculum, and corporations and companies that offer high-level advice and expertise.

GOALING The organization is structured around a “goaling” workflow, to ensure that annual deliverables relating to its charitable purposes guide workflow and performance monitoring occurs. This system includes: • Goals set annually, proposed by the Executives, approved and modified by the Trustees, and enacted by the staff team of the charity • Quarterly reviews of these goals by the Board and Executives • Quarterly reports linked to these goals as delivered by the Leadership team to the Executive team and thus upward to the Trustees • Biannual staff reviews of the Leadership staff by the Executives to assess the achievement of these goals • These same staff reviews also focus on guiding and tracking individual staff goals so that they feel valued as individuals within their work • Annual series of anonymous surveys for the staff team, to facilitate a process of upwards feedback GATHERING DATA In order to improve our educations programs, and track and measure impact, we gathering data sets and testimonies from all our educational programs. Further, we are in the process of developing a research team to specifically work with our prison literacy and storytelling program, to measure not only the program's impact on the individuals and those around them, but to also gather data for longer term aims, such as informing prison reform. REVIEWING At regular intervals, we use a reviewing process for all our education programs. This includes gathering together different personnel (both internal and external) who have contributed or worked with the program to go over its progress, impact, data gathered, and personal experiences, in order to guide further development.

In 2018 alone we taught 4 courses of our Frames Prison Program to 52 students at the Denver Women’s Correctional Facility. We printed 3 journals, publishing 53 writers from 7 countries and 16 states. We launched a new education initiative for low-literacy youth, a beautiful new website for our nonprofit, and began development for a teacher storytelling program. This year we aim to: - Launch our teaching storytelling program, through which we seek to inspire teachers to realize their full potential and celebrate their everyday heroism through the act of telling their own story - Expand our Frames Prison Program into 2 more prisons in Colorado through a peer-to-peer training system developed and launched in collaboration with the Morgridge College of Education at the University of Denver - Take our prison program internationally, launching it in the Scottish Prison System in summer 2019 - Grow our subscriber base for our journal, F(r)iction, through the launch of a new website and the use of innovative marketing techniques such as a Kickstarter campaign - Following extensive trials of our Youth Writing program over the last eighteen months, we aim to launch several flagship courses in high schools in Colorado and Ohio by the end of 2019