Through a partnership with Baltimore City Community College Refugee Youth Project since 2014, Press Press hosts publishing workshops with teen refugees in an immigrant and refugee only space. The space is designed to counter the standard model of ESL (English Second Language) learning. The standard model operates in a way that erases or ignores the identities of the learners in an effort to fit them into the hegemonic linguistic mode of the United States.

The collaborative space we’ve created, conversely, places the identities and narratives of the participants as central in the experience of learning and using English; or learning how ‘to be’ in English as one’s second language without erasing one’s native voice. For example, we regularly print poetry in the exact form it was written, without ‘correcting’ for grammar and spelling. The aim is to affirm the ways participants express themselves in this linguistic medium. In Spring of 2018, we expanded the program to hire youth as professional writers and artists creating content to be published by Press Press.