Grantee Spotlight on TeamWrk
We’re excited to spotlight the TeamWrk Foundation, a 2025 Gamers Engaged Play-it-Forward grantee. TeamWrk envisions a world where youth can level up to their full potential. As a youth-serving organization, their mission is to equip and empower everyone to elevate their game. Let’s meet the TeamWrk Foundation.
Our Interview with TeamWrk
Gamers Engaged: How will this Play-it-Forward grant support your organization?
TeamWrk: It really comes down to deepening the impact of our WRK ZONE Gaming Clubs. This funding helps us strengthen the safe, welcoming, and inclusive communities we’re intentionally building through gaming. For us, gaming is a pathway to belonging, leadership, and growth.
The grant will support our camps, clubs, and workshops, where we combine gaming, STEM learning, and team-building so young people can build both technical and social-emotional skills in real time. It also allows us to keep our gaming environments current by updating games on both consoles and PCs, which is essential for engagement and access.
Just as importantly, these funds help us invest in the people and practices that make our spaces truly supportive: positive behavior supports, healthy snacks, and meaningful compensation and recognition for the mentors and staff who bring so much time, talent, and passion to this work.
The outcomes we expect are clear: more young people feeling like they have a place where they belong, stronger digital citizenship and healthier online habits, safer and more inclusive gaming communities, and an expanded network of youth and adult supporters who believe in this model. In short, this grant helps us grow both the quality and reach of a community-centered approach to youth development through gaming.
Gamers Engaged: What's your vision for the future?
TeamWrk: We want young people to level up to their full potential online and offline. We believe gaming can be a launchpad for confidence, connection, and real-world skills when it happens in the right environment.
Over the next three to five years, we want to scale WRK ZONE so more youth can access our camps, clubs, and workshops. As we grow, we’ll continue blending gaming, STEM, and character development so participants are becoming stronger collaborators, problem-solvers, and leaders.
A major part of that future is culture change in digital spaces. We want to see online safety practices become second nature across our programs and communities, with measurable reductions in online bullying and harmful behavior. Our goal is to help young people build the habits and judgment to navigate digital environments with empathy, responsibility, and confidence.
We also envision a robust, connected community of youth, mentors, and families who are all invested in digital literacy and safe online spaces. In the long term, success for us looks like a model that not only supports individual growth, but also reshapes what healthy gaming communities can look like at scale.
Gamers Engaged: What opportunities does your organization offer for community engagement?
TeamWrk: Young people can engage directly through WRK ZONE Camps, Clubs, and Workshops. We also invite people to join WRK ZONE NetWRK and WRK Shops, either as young participants or as supporters who want to help strengthen the ecosystem around them.
For adults and experienced community members, there are meaningful roles as mentors, volunteers, and ambassadors. These are hands-on opportunities to support youth development, model healthy digital behavior, and help create the kind of inclusive gaming culture we all want to see more of. We also welcome collaboration on online-safety campaigns and digital citizenship events, especially for partners who want to drive broader culture change. And as demand grows, there are opportunities to help us bring Team WRK to new locations for clubs, activations, and community events.
For the Gamers Engaged community specifically, there are so many natural ways to plug in. Members can volunteer as mentors or tutors, co-host and facilitate workshops or club sessions, and help amplify responsible gaming and positive digital footprints across their own channels and networks.
Gamers Engaged: What's something really cool you have done in the past year?
TeamWrk: One thing we’re really proud of this past year is how much we expanded our impact. We successfully launched and sustained safe, welcoming, and inclusive gaming communities in two new locations.
We also significantly expanded our online-safety outreach through WRK ZONE NetWRK and WRK Shops, delivering programming in both virtual and onsite settings. That gave us the ability to meet youth and families where they are. Another exciting step was integrating social media branding directly into our programs, helping participants better understand how identity, influence, and responsibility show up in digital spaces.
Beyond gaming clubs, we brought our training into sports communities, working with coaches, athletes, and parents to strengthen team culture, communication, and online behavior. We also had the opportunity to partner with Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital to bring our programming to their events, which was incredibly meaningful and opened new pathways for connection and service.
And finally, we were honored to be recognized by Common Sense and to participate in a webinar and other notable opportunities that elevated our work. For us, that recognition affirmed that what we’re building—safe, inclusive, youth-centered digital communities—is both needed and scalable.
