Luke Southwell

When he was in fifth grade, he, his sister and his friends started a school newspaper. They picked topics, wrote articles, met deadlines and set the newspaper. When they were in middle school, they wanted to share their elementary school newspaper experience with other kids and show them that writing could be easy and fun. They put together forms for every type of article a kid might want to write (the forms break down who, what, why, where, when and how) and we used lots of games, speakers and activities. They started working with one Title I elementary school and now work with a total of 10 schools/programs. Last year, they published more than two dozen newspapers and printed 10,000 copies. We have more than 200 middle and high school volunteers, reach more than 350 elementary students a year and are still completely run by students and volunteers. Their student board has grown from the six students who founded PressFriends to a student board of 28.