"Why hip-hop? Hip-hop is it right now! I don’t know if you realize, everything out there, whether it be video, audio, print media, ads in magazines – the dancing; hip-hop is the craze right now. Why not use that as a way to engage these kids positively, because we know they love it."

"It was just like, these kids are so incredibly intelligent when they’re engaged in that discussion. They’re still going to act a fool, and act like their regular selves and be like, “I’m the boss!” even after that."

"My name is Neil Botelho, and I’m currently 23 years old – as of two days ago! I have been working with Word for over a year now. Me and Lynn founded it last summer. It was kind of an off-shoot of another similar program called Literacy Through Hip-hop."

"One of the things that I thought was really fun was um, one of the tasks was to compare the garbage collection system in Montreal and Cairo - which would be a lot of fun if you had a clue where Cairo was. It's that type of thing that doesn't seem to translate into our particular environment. But it's a great idea on paper."

"I think there has to be some experience first on which to base the opinion you can't just ask somebody before you start "what do you want to do? - They don't know."