Busy Summer
With programs ending later than usual, we’ve had a very busy summer prepping for the upcoming year! Our staff retreated to the coast for our annual planning and we hired two Supply Chain Interns to support the creation of our redesigned STEM Kits!
Staff Retreat
This June the In4All team took our annual planning on the road! Thanks to the generous support of a donor, our team spent two nights at the beach getting to know each other and deepening our understanding of and commitment to our work. We are grateful for the support to deepen our regular practice to reflect, restore and connect with self and our communities. We recognize the privilege of this practice and also acknowledge that it helps us to foster a culture of learning and innovation that allows us to positively impact our programming and the In4All community.
in4all Interns
Our team is excited to welcome Jesse and Grace, our High School Interns working with us this summer to create STEM Kits for our 4th & 5th-grade STEM Connect program. Each year In4All practices its mission by creating internal internship opportunities for local high school students. We aim to give students an avenue to explore career fields, apply classroom knowledge in real-world environments, and gain insights into the opportunities that lie ahead of them. Every experience helps us to deepen our understanding of what future In4All high school programming could be. Thank you, Jesse and Grace, for being In4All!
Jesse Owusu-Hienno (he/him)
Supply Chain Intern
“I hope to learn how to operate in a work environment, mainly gaining general work experience. I love math and I am excited to see what a job that uses STEM skills looks like. I am interested in giving back to my community so working with a nonprofit in education will allow me to do this!”
Grace Fast
(she/her)
Supply Chain Intern
“I hope to learn how to impact our community in a new and more outstanding way than I have before. I would love to learn what it is like to help a community that needs it. I want to become a pediatrician and later in life travel to work with underserved countries to help women and children in need. I am excited to gain skills and experience in the nonprofit sector to prepare me for my journey. Plus who doesn’t love some STEM, you can always learn more.”
CREATING OUR STEM KitS
When programs ended, we had all sorts of materials on hand from our STEM Connect activities. Partially used experiment kits, piles of raw materials, and more plastic bags (from our virtual kit design) than we knew what to do with. Thankfully Grace and Jesse approached this task with determination, and the pictures speak for themselves.
before kit processing
after kit processing
Kit Design
Now, we are creating kits for this coming year. We have redesigned our kits with the feedback we received from our volunteers, teachers, and students. Since programming will be in person, we will no longer need to create virtual kits which means a lot less single-use plastic! One thing we learned from our hybrid programs was that having a kit for every student increased their engagement during the activity. This year each classroom set will have individual kits for every student. The activities will remain the same although we have made a few thoughtful changes within our materials to encourage rapid prototyping and failing forward.
building kits
In this phase of preparing our activity kits, volunteers from our business partners are central to making it happen—just like during our programs! We have Kit Building sessions happening throughout the month both in our In4All offices as well as on-site at our partner’s business locations. With volunteers filling containers with rocks, labeling bags, and counting out q-tips, these experiment kits are well on their way to being on desks in front of students!
