Deep Center’s mission is to empower Savannah’s young people to thrive as learners, community leaders, and agents of change. Through creative writing, cultural production, and art, Deep creates platforms for the city’s youth and the village of support around them, including their families and adult allies, to share stories, engage in debates, and make Savannah a more just and equitable place.

Deep Center’s framework is anti-racist, trauma-informed, and culturally responsive. We promote a roots-cause model of youth and community development that works on three parallel tracks: direct service, systems change, and narrative change. Deep lifts up youth and their village, advocates for just policies, and disrupts dehumanizing narratives with firsthand stories about youth and their families healing, growing, and thriving through individual growth and collective action.

In collaboration with adult writers, artists, and mentors, Deep youth learn how to tell their stories powerfully, celebrate their neighborhoods, elevate Savannah’s forgotten narratives, and find their place in history and current events. When this happens, they gain agency as learners, artists, and community leaders able to speak out on the issues affecting them and their families. And in collaboration with Deep’s youth leaders, adults in their village learn how to step back, listen, and work from the healing-centered paradigm when supporting young people.

Deep was founded locally in 2008 to address the effects of Savannah’s high poverty on youths’ literacy and learning. Since then, Deep has served nearly 4,150 youth, published 109 anthologies of youth writing, trained over 300 volunteer instructors, provided professional development for hundreds of adults (e.g., teachers, probation officers, judges), and hosted live readings reaching diverse audiences of 10,000 (3,500 annually).

Our Stories Matter

By Deep Center

Our Stories Matter