Mission

W.O.R.D. is a youth-led literacy program working with inner-city youth in Montreal. We use positive hip hop music and culture to educate, engage and empower youth through literacy, critical thinking and self esteem development.

Goals

1. To provide a supplement to the traditional classroom, encouraging literacy development and empowerment by using hip hop as a tool for engagement in sites across the city of Montreal
2. To provide each participant with the resources to write, record and produce their own original hip hop song, using various forms of media
3. To promote positive hip hop culture through education and discussion, and by acting as an intervention between negative media messages and the reality of inner-city youth in society

Website: http://www.facebook.com/pages/WORD-Writing-Our-Rhymes-Down/39602522583

W.O.R.D has collaborated with James Lyng, The Digital Literacy Project and Tyndale Saint-Georges Community Centre (not included in this study) over the past two years doing an extra-curricular hip-hop literacy program with children and youth.