By Nancy Williams | Project Leader
Nearly 300 youth have engaged in activities related to the Startup Day project at Boys & Girls Clubs of the Midlands. We have exceeded our goal for outreach and introducing STEAM activities to youth, especially teens. From creating websites and learning to make healthy snacks in GrubClub to developing apps with AppInventor to making a banana piano using a MakeyMakey kit to figuring out how to keep 3-D designs on the plane so that they print properly with the 3-D printer to redesigning donated furniture for a community open house to showcase their talents, our teens have been super busy creating super awesome projects.
Your support for this project has helped us leverage funding and attract STEAM professionals to mentor our kids. Since the launch of the Startup Day project, we have gained new individual and corporate (local and national) donors that have granted both cash and in-kind products, including mentors. This project has raised $1,625 (with matching funds $1,815) and since 2013 all related microprojects have raised over $6,700 online through GlobalGiving. The funds and the results from the project activities have helped to leverage an additional $33,500 offline through donations and grants from individuals and companies including Google, Cisco and Subway.
As for mentors two local coding schools, a university and a community college now provide on-going mentorship and Boys & Girls Clubs of the Midlands has engaged in a statewide initiative to connect youth, college students and professionals in STEM careers bringing programmers, technologists, artists, and managers together to support STEM education through projects and mentoring. Our new partnerships include collaboration with a local university that provides opportunities for our youth to work on 3-D printed prosthetics for kids and a pilot program with a coding school that trains youth participants to become web developers and entrepreneurs by developing websites for local small businesses and nonprofits. The learning outcomes alone are incredible but the potential lifetime economic impact for youth involved in these projects is tremendous.
Without you, Marcus would not have had the opportunity to participate in FabRehab. Without FabRehab and the display of his redesigned table at the Gaining STEAM showcase, Marcus would not have had the opportunity to work on a design team, share his artistic point of view nor get caught smiling while showing his artwork to his mother for the first time. Without you, Tyler would not be enrolled in multiple STEM Academy projects learning to code with Codecademy, make video games in Kodu or program robots with CEEN and have his talents validated by no less than three different mentors that visit the Clubs. Without you, Katherine would not have discovered that she can learn a lot with STEM in the summer and that she can be good at making interactive websites. Without you, Chaz would not have learned to use Scratch but most importantly embrace that when you run into a problem, 'don't give up'.
Although it looks like we have not reached our goal in fundraising, you have helped us go well beyond our goals in both funding and reaching our outcomes for youth. The survey feedback from youth involved in the project activities are encouraging. Everyone, 100% of participants, would recommend the activities to their friends. And each one has reported learning something new. At the Gaining STEAM event, they actually proved that they learned it to the community.
Boys & Girls Clubs of the Midlands will continue to engage youth in STEAM activities that make up Startup Day. Thank you for helping us leverage $1,625 into over $40,000! Thank you for continuing to support our kids to become content creators and not just consumers. Thank you for helping us give our kids in our community the opportunity to choose and help others while they create a better life for themselves. Thank you for giving Marcus and all of our kids a reason to smile.
Links:
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
