Our Story

Our Mission

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.

Our Framework

Deep Center’s framework is trauma-informed and culturally responsive. We promote a root-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.

Vision: The Change We See

We envision a Savannah where our young people and their families thrive as learners, community leaders, and artists; and we envision a community, a government, and institutions that hear, value, and respond to their voices with equity, justice, and care.

Our Why

Deep Center strengthens Savannah’s communities

The realities of poverty in Savannah are sobering: approximately 20.4% of residents and 28.5% of children live below the poverty line, and 67% of public school students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. These burdens fall disproportionately on communities of color, exacerbating longstanding inequities. Poverty is closely linked with trauma and significantly impacts a child’s ability to learn and thrive, challenges that Savannah’s public schools cannot address alone. Meanwhile, adults and families face life amid diminishing support and growing stigmatization, while Savannah’s youth, especially those from marginalized communities, often go unheard, unseen, and uncelebrated. 

Despite Georgia’s deep historical significance, its civic and educational systems often mirror the national pattern of punishing rather than supporting youth. In our state, Black boys are more likely to be referred to the juvenile justice system than their white peers. Often, instead of investing in mental health, education, and restorative opportunities, resources are funneled into punitive systems that do not account for history, systemic harms, and the often traumatizing daily experiences of growing up in Savannah. The result is a culture of punishment rather than restoration and care. This is why we do what we do: we believe that critical hope requires both the interruption of harmful systems and the invitation to imagine and build better ones.

Core Values: What Drives Us

Depth: We believe that a deep exploration of our community’s shared and diverse narratives is the surest way to open minds, encourage hearts, and inspire change.

Community: We believe that solutions are found both locally and nationally. We leverage the talent, creativity, and care that exists in our city while sharing ideas with experts and practitioners nationwide.

Deep Center centers a holistic approach for youth and adults

Equity: We believe in doing the right thing for Savannah’s most vulnerable populations.

Root-Cause Analysis: We believe that the people are not the problem, the problem is the problem. In an inequitable ecosystem that is the product of an unjust history, placing the burden of change solely on young people and vulnerable populations overlooks their day-to-day realities, sets them up to fail, and misses the root causes of their challenges. A clear-eyed approach focuses on strengthening not only young people, but also the village around them and the unjust structures that are at odds with their well-being.

Co-learning: We believe that we build true knowledge and understanding by valuing every person in the room for the unique fund of knowledge they bring.

Deep recognizes the world is hard – which is why we prioritize joy

Truth: We believe that when we value the honest voices of young people, they gain confidence in themselves and the power to take charge of their stories and to transform their communities.

Courage: We believe that honesty—both in writing and in life—requires bravery and conviction. We strive to inspire intellectual and emotional courage in our young people.

Joy: We believe that true creativity springs from a motivated and joyful approach to complex problem-solving. We delight in our work and deliberately incorporate fun into everything we do.