Y Choose Y4STEM by Liam Gillis

Almost a year from our last blog post, I would like to take the chance to acknowledge and thank all of our hard-working volunteers and board members for their dedicated work, and actively contributing everyday to make Y4STEM, an inclusive and safe environment; where we can foster youthful minds in the art of STEM education. One of the best parts about Y4STEM, is that we are spread out, but close, we are all tied by our love for helping our communities, and being able to collaborate with colleagues, helps us scale up our ability to help each of our communities anywhere in the United States. Eventually, if possible we would also like to focus our efforts also outside of the United States, to show that no matter where you are, you can get the critical skills that come from STEM without having to spend absorbent amounts of money on profit-based STEM organizations.

At Y4STEM, we have accomplished many great things this year, we have been able to contribute to many pertinent initiatives in order to further STEM education in each of our respective states; furthermore, Y4STEM has also given us the ability to bounce ideas off each other in order to make a larger impact; for example, after lecture one day Sayid and I were watching the annual Integration Bee hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, I was intrigued and suggested that this would be a great way to introduce young people to STEM, to watch dedicated students in the field of STEM participate in a fun competition in hopes to ignite the minds of the youth to start thinking about STEM careers. Even though, due to scheduling issues, we have been forced to move back the competition we are still very hopeful that it will come to fruition for its intended purpose of creating that spark.

At Y4STEM, our initial values still ring true, we are here to make a difference in STEM, we will never back down, and never give up from any problems that we may face, because at the end of the day any work we do, wil be positive in the end, we want to look at Y4STEM in the future and know that we have paved a path for future generations to experience more inclusion in STEM, with the hope that they can further our efforts, so that one day our STEM fields will not know the word disparity, and we will all be of one, working together in STEM, to further better the world.

To conclude this wonderful year, and many more at Y4STEM, I would also like to give my utmost thanks to Sayid for making this all possible, the creation of Y4STEM has helped many of people, and with our hopes at Y4STEM, we will keep growing larger and larger to help many more. I would also like to extend thanks to the other board members who contribute in making this collaborative run smoothly, and lastly I would like to thank all of our volunteers who help contribute to the framework of Y4STEM, always there to lend a helping hand to those in need.

At Y4STEM, we will never say back away from challenges, and we always look for volunteers to grow our vision at Y4STEM, if our mission speaks to you, as it did to me many years ago, please to not hesitate to reach out, we would love to have you on the team!

Cheers to another year at Y4STEM!!!!!

Sincerely, Liam