Our goal is to close the gender gap in STEM by giving girls the opportunity to experience STEM through hands-on activities. We were able to accomplish this goal by holding lunch meeting once each week to talk about upcoming events. We also met three times a week after school to work on our website. Each member of our team was responsible for an aspect of our project that interests them. We hosted six workshops at the Palmdale City Library and had tables at other events in our community such as The LA County Air Show, Cyber Quest, and the Book Festival. We have also participated in other events hosted by organizations we support such as: WE Day, MS Walk, and the Palmdale Christmas Parade. At our events, we provided children with hands-on STEM activities such as Fireworks in a Jar (Chemistry), Density of Liquids, Mystery Architecture(engineering), meal worms(biology), writing notes to the stratosphere, and we also had a survey at all of our events to record our impact. We spent one hour or more everyday since October for social media. We spent one hour each week updating our website. We had the opportunity to launch two balloons to the stratosphere(edge of space) along with the notes that children have written at our events! We were able to do this at Edwards Air Force Base for NASA! We did this to inspire girls to reach for the stars and to show them that if 8 middle school girls from Palmdale can launch a balloon to the edge of space with help from NASA, they can also accomplish their goals and have a career in STEM! |