Summer of STEM

This year, after safety restrictions impacted our ability to spread FIRST’s message at in-person events, we had a chance to be creative with our outreach, starting with sharing information about how to stay safe. During the summer, we saw that due to closed schools, kids missed out on learning and developing a passion for STEM, which created an opportunity for us to help our community. We developed and ran a two-week long daily virtual summer camp for 40+ elementary and middle schoolers, covering topics from coding to geology, and including talks from guest speakers about future STEM careers. The camp was free, allowing low-income students in our community to attend and learn the basics of many topics they missed out on without in-person school. According to parents, students even “got up much earlier than normal in order to not miss any minute of the camp”.