COA Youth & Family Centers was awarded a grant of $375,000 by Kohl’s Cares and they’ve used the grant to fund their after-school STEM program. STEM stands for science, technology, engineering and math. COA’s STEM programming makes STEM education accessible to over 6,500 Milwaukee youth – many of whom come from low-income communities.
COA celebrated their program - as well as National STEM Day - on November 8 at its Goldin Center location.
Listen to the audio story below to hear about the program from two COA students, as well as Executive Director Tom Schneider.
COA STEM Fair, photo by John Schoneman
COA is a longstanding pillar of education in Milwaukee. They organization has been serving Milwaukee’s youth with early child development, youth development and community development programming.
COA’s Goldin Center, which lives on 23rd and Burleigh Street, is a community hub for after school education. It serves thousands of youth who come from underserved families and neighborhoods. This makes its STEM programming all the more vital and important.
For National STEM Day, COA’s students were invited to celebrate with a STEM fair in the Goldin Center gymnasium. The gym quickly filled up students fresh out of school, but who were nevertheless eager to keep learning for an extra couple of hours.
Students visited different stations where they could try different STEM-related experiments. While many of the students there take part in COA’s STEM after school programming, many were experiencing STEM for the first time. Jaws dropped, eyes widened with excitement and many kids left the gym completely awestruck.
The after school curriculum COA has put together gives students the chance to be a part of unique projects but also gives them the opportunity to present their work. COA also partners with schools like the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha and Discovery World where they get hands on STEM experiences with people making their way into the STEM field.
Learn more about COA's STEM programming and how to sign children up here.