Greenworks: Student Engineering Projects Fund

Greetings all,

Thank you for your contributions to our new Caribbean astrotourism project during our winter fundraising drive.  We have also been awarded a small grant from the Office of Astronomy for Development, which we have been able to pool together with your donations to increase our impact even more!

Currently, we are in the process of getting the project up and running.  Over the next few months, we'll be developing a curriculum for prospective astrotourism students to help them learn about the basics of establishing and running a business in the US Virgin Islands, astronomy, and establishing and evaluating learning outcomes in public outreach events.  We're planning on offering this workshop later this year.

Additionally, we are beginning to develop astrotourism kits and activities that students will be able to use when interning with a local business or starting their own business.  In the next few weeks, our student intern, Nikita, will be working with a University of the Virgin Islands professor to offer a tour of the night sky at a wedding party, which we'll use to trial the materials and activities for doing private astrotourism activities like this.  She is also working on developing an exhibit at the Virgin Islands Children's Museum that will teach spatial reasoning when thinking about how planets move through the night sky, which we'll later adapt for astrotourism activities elsewhere on the islands.

Thanks again for your support, and please help spread the word about this exciting project.  We're expecting great things this year!

With gratitude,

Lev