How old do you have to be to become a writer? A young changemaker from Wisconsin with whom I had a great luck to work with thinks there is no age limit!

Katie Eder, (16, Milwaukee, Wisconsin), is the founder of Kids Tales, a non-profit organization that organizes creative writing workshops for underserved kids (8-12 years old). Her organization provides outside-of-school learning opportunities for young students and helps them find their own voice through writing. Katie dreams about every kid having his/her book published, and their own story told around the globe.

Kids Tales inspires every child to write by teaching  to create, compose, and publish short stories. Kids Tales workshops include ten hours of training over the course of one week during the summer, including brainstorming, writing, and editing/revising  stories. At the end of the week, the stories are compiled and self-published in an anthology on Amazon.com. Each student receives a copy of the anthology, as well as his or her very own journal and pencils. Kids Tales workshops are all taught by teenagers. One week workshops usually have a big impact on lives of young kids, their families, and entire communities. Once the kids are inspired, they never stop writing.

Kids Tales started out small in the summer of 2014 with two workshops in the Milwaukee, Wisconsin area. In summer 2015, Kids Tales expanded to Chicago, Illinois and Washington, DC. Kids Tales won the American Field Service (AFS) Project: Change, Vision in Action award and taught a Kids Tales workshop in Colombia, South America in June 2015. Kids Tales and Katie were honored by the International Literacy Association in its inaugural 30 Under 30 list. Katie is the youngest person on the ILA’s 30 under 30 list, which includes individuals under 30 years old from 13 countries who are changing the global literacy landscape

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