October 29, 2015
In 2013 Medgar Evers College Alumnus Curtis Harris established Green Earth Poets Café in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. A nonprofit organization providing the community with a platform for expression, Green Earth Poets Café is dedicated to using poetry to increase literacy among at-risk youth in Crown Heights, Brownsville, and Bedford-Stuyvesant. Green Earth Poets Café offers three core programs:
· A community based “Spoken Word Open Mic Poetry Series” which helps to give voice to community concerns
· “Our Youth Are Slamming,” a workshop currently offered in schools which promotes creative writing, reading, and public speaking using poetry performance techniques
· “No More Silent Voices,” a poetry program for youth incarcerated at Rikers Island that incorporates creative writing and performance
Green Earth Poets Café is launching Green Earth Poets Theater in the near future to continue to showcase our youth, giving them opportunity and a stage to increase self-esteem, self-expression, and self-confidence using the arts.
