Research has proven that most children coming from underserved backgrounds normally do not lead careers pertaining to STEM, so they become a minority group in these fields due to their lack of proper resources and lesser quality education facilities. These young children especially struggle with intense mental and financial instability at such an early age, truly hurting them in the long term. Our team wants to deal with this issue by inspiring an interest in STEM and learning for these younger children of lower socioeconomic status in our own creative ways to help them make their education a priority, despite their circumstances. We also want to open their eyes to what their future could hold in terms of the variety of STEM careers, teaching them that their future does not have to be dictated by heir current situation. Our non-profit is the largest, global youth-led 501(c)(3) registered organization that seeks to combat the educational and mental struggles of children of lower socioeconomic status such as ones living in homeless shelters, orphanages, foster homes, domestic abuse homes, and rural, underserved areas. To help as many young kids as possible, we collaborate with other youth-led organizations and NGOs around the world to share knowledge, resources, and best practices in combating lack of interest in education and mental illnesses amongst children of lower socioeconomic status.
When it comes to working with children, we create maker spaces and mock science fairs, incorporating live simulations along with outdoor expeditions because we seek implement hands-on, creative, engaging activities as we work with kids to stimulate their curiosities in learning. We take a challenge based approach because our goal is not to feed a variety of information to our children, but rather excite them about learning in a way that they want to take control over their own education and life. To become more in inclusive for neuro-divergent and disabled children, we create short children’s books featuring STEM superheroes, and we have a board game (Infinity Board Game) that specifically was made for children with learning disabilities. Of course, we organize awareness campaigns to educate communities, and we host fundraisers to raise money to support these children financially in order to help them whilst forging their own educational paths. We provide these children PREP KITS with back-to-school supplies, CRISIS Hotline codes, and paid memberships for online learning websites.
At the social level, the main chapter primarily works in the North Texas region, but we do seek to offer assistance to any individuals who would like to start a chapter for this non-profit on their own in their respective region. We have been able to start many chapters by recruiting high school students from across the nation and in several countries around the world, so anyone interested in supporting our initiatives can reach out to stemstarsliteracyfoundation@gmail.com to create a chapter. On a more local level, we focus on the educational and mental struggles of underprivileged children, but on an international level, we also use our children's books so that chapters can work on increasing literacy rates among these children. In addition, we work at the policy level to work with government officials in terms of drafting legislation that can offer more mental health funding for underprivileged children in homeless shelters, foster homes, domestic abuse shelters, etc. We have created engaging informational social media posts promoting our initiatives, and a podcast featuring coordinators of shelters that can provide detailed advice on how to support young children that are underserved. If you are interested in getting involved as a volunteer or want to donate, please check out the "Get Involved" page and the "Contact" pages.
With your donations, we can create more children’s books, purchase more activities, create more care packages, and support these underserved children when it comes to their educational pursuits. Any donation is significant and with your help, we can better help our team members do our job of stimulating an interest in STEM education to the best of our abilities amongst these less privileged children.
