Moonshot Project to Propel Girls into STEM
- By Dian Schaffhauser
- 10/12/20
Could
a "moonshot" effort draw a million more girls and young
women into STEM fields? That's the intent of new initiative that will
embed STEM learning opportunities into out-of-school programs over
the next five years. The "Million Girls Moonshot" is being
funded bu a consortium of foundations, including the Intel
Foundation,
the Gordon
and Betty Moore Foundation,
the STEM
Next Opportunity Fund
and the Charles
Stewart Mott Foundation.
The organizations will provide grant funding and in-kind resources to
100,000 afterschool programs that are part of the Mott-funded 50
State Afterschool Network.
That program reaches 10 million young people.
Help
will include technical assistance, educational resources, access to
Intel's She
Will Connect
partners and mentorship from STEM experts, including Intel employee
volunteers.
Additional
funding and programming will come from a number of other
organizations, including Qualcomm,
Technovation,
National
Girls Collaborative Project,
CSforALL,
JFF,
Techbridge
Girls,
STEMconnector,
NASA
and Lyda
Hill Philanthropies.
"When
my father, Robert Noyce, and Gordon Moore founded Intel, they built
upon the experiences of their youth, where they had opportunities to
build, invent, engineer and experiment. These hands-on experiences
gave them a sense of initiative, perseverance and a belief that they
could create revolutionary new technologies," said Penny Noyce,
founding board chair of the STEM Next Opportunity Fund, in a
statement. "The Million Girls Moonshot will help girls from
diverse backgrounds develop this same engineering mindset, and I'm
thrilled at the way it continues the legacy of Intel's founders and
their passion for advancing STEM."
About the Author
Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.