According to The Guardian, Irish novelist Roddy Doyle, inspired by his friend Dave Eggers, has founded Fighting Words, an organization devoted to programs that encourage deprived children to pursue writing. Established in Dublin in 2009, Fighting Words has guided several thousand kids from local and faraway public schools. It’s funded by private donations and staffed largely by volunteers, and all of its services are free. In fact, it’s succeeded so much that sessions, which consist largely of workshops, are booked up to a year in advance.

“The interest is huge,” said Sean Love, Executive Director and co-Founder. “We’re obviously filling a gap that is not filled in formal education.”

Roddy Doyle described Fighting Words as a place that offers a few things that schools don’t often provide: “(The discipline of writing) is the freedom to challenge your mind, to admit failure and then to start again. Schools don’t really allow failure and yet it’s a valid part of any endeavor, not just writing.”

About some of the students who come to Fighting Words, Doyle said, “They didn’t think they could write. But I can se the difference from when they first come in—it’s visually apparent—and it’s a quick transition from thinking  ‘I can’t do anything’ to ‘I can do something’.”

The success of Fighting Words, inspired by Dave Eggers’ 826 National in the US, though it was the first of its kind in the UK and Europe, has already made way for more new writing-focused centers, like the Ministry of Stories in London, which was founded in part by author Nick Hornby.

Read more about what Fighting Words is up to, here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/mar/11/roddy-doyle-fighting-words-project