About Community~Word History | Board of Directors | Staff | Press | Website The Community-Word Project (CWP) is a New York City based arts-in-education organization that seeks to increase the literacy and leadership of at-risk public school youth by integrating creative expression and community-building into their classroom curricula. Our program is based on a philosophy of learning that weaves young people's personal and social concerns with academic objectives. The Community-Word Project's goal is to give young people the life skills and safe space that they need to become active citizens. Together, our young people experience that they are not alone in the face of everyday pressures. We have learned that when young people believe that their experiences and ideas are valid, they are motivated to gain the tools necessary to express them. Our programs include: public school classroom and community center collaborative writing residencies, where, working with classroom teachers and after-school staff, we design and run full school-year long residencies, which culminate in murals, performances, or publications that are presented to and shown in the community professional development, where we train public school classroom teachers, after-school leaders and youth workers in collaborative creative expression literacy and leadership methods teaching artist training and internship program, where we rigorously train MFA students and professional artists in our teaching techniques in order for them to become teaching artists for underserved youth on-site workshops sponsored/hosted by community corporations, such as Barnes & Noble and Starbucks, where we bridge the gap between the public school community and local businesses