Rhyme and money

Cash dries up but a burgeoning
literacythrough-hip-hop program
is still trying to reach inner-city youth

GETTING THE WORD OUT:
Lynn Worrell (far left) and volunteers

by NADIA HAUSFATHER

In recent weeks, Writing Our Rhymes Down—a literacy-through-rap program aimed at inner-city youth, aged 10 to 16—has been reaching out for support to get its feet back on the ground and words back in youth’s priorities. Its limited funding fizzled out last June.

The program started in 2007, when Toronto-based Literacy Through Hip Hop (LTHH) asked Concordia University students Lynn Worrell and Munira Ravji to pilot its program in Montreal. With small honoraria from the Toronto group, they started organizing the 12-week project at the Tyndale St-Georges Community Centre in Little Burgundy, to give youth an alternative space to develop self-esteem and critical thinking skills through hip hop culture.

After weeks of research and outreach, “we took the LTHH platform and made it into something that was our vision,” says Ravji. They called it WORD, and were soon joined by a posse of 10 culturally diverse, mostly student volunteers who knew the limitations of the traditional education system for underprivileged youth. They did one-on-one mentoring with the youth, while the Atwater Library Digital Literacy Project and local artists taught hip hop skills and recorded and mixed the kids’ songs.

Nomadic Massive member Nicolas Palacios-Hardy gave freestyle workshops to improve their articulation and writing skills, as he’s worried there’s a general trend towards eliminating funding towards arts in schools. Hip hop suffers from an additional stigma, he says, because “even though it’s mainstream, there are a lot of stereotypes about teaching hip hop for youth in Quebec.”

While WORD landed its first official gig at James Lyng High School in 2008 thanks to some funding from the English Montreal School Board, Worrell says she needs financial support to hire permanent staff. To support herself besides the EMSB’s honorarium for coordinating WORD, Worrell had to work two jobs, which took time away from administrating and searching for permanent funds.

“What we need is a trustee for our organization so it can grow,” says Worrell. “Just because the program ended doesn’t mean these youths’ lives stop. We built relationships with these kids. The youth who came to our program can still get more out of it.”

So, in past weeks, they spread the word. They presented rhymes and a short movie at Concordia’s Cinema Politica two weeks ago and facilitated a workshop about how hip hop can provide ways of learning that give youth a voice to fight discriminatory “isms” at QPIRG Concordia’s Study in Action conference.

Fifteen-year-old Tivon (aka “Titan/WORD keeps me writin’”) Thompson—says that without hip hop, “there’s no other way that people can hear what I’m trying to express.” He spoke about being a victim of police racial profiling and his disappointment with sexist commercial hip hop on Black Entertainment Television.

“There’s a stereotype right now that black males can only be tough,” says WORD volunteer Ayinde Bennett, and WORD is an opportunity to critically look at those images and provide youth with other role models and socially conscious hip hop.

As for 16-year-old Rasheed Williams, he used to shy away from all his teachers, but hip hop helped him through hard times and broke him and his rhymes out of their shell. “I used to be blank. But now I got a flow going on in my head,” says Williams, because WORD was a “safe space, people won’t judge you. It was like a second family.”

NOMADIC MASSIVE WILL PROMOTE
WORD AT THEIR CD LAUNCH AT PETIT
CAMPUS (57 PRINCE ARTHUR E.), ON
SATURDAY, MARCH 28, 8:30 P.M., $15
(CD INCLUDED).
FOR MORE INFO ABOUT WORD,
E-MAIL WORDMONTREAL@GMAIL.COM
OR SEE THEIR FACEBOOK PAGE.