Celebrating a Successful First Year of the Million Girls Moonshot
Last year, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, we launched our Million Girls Moonshot initiative. We rallied our partners and committed to engaging one million more girls in STEM learning through afterschool and summer programs by 2025. While the goal is ambitious, it is also urgent. Now is the time to re-imagine who can engineer, who can build, who can design and who can indeed make the world of the future a reality.
Leveraging a partnership with the robust 50 State Afterschool Network, we empowered and supported afterschool and summer STEM programs in every state across the country. The result was phenomenal. In year one, the Moonshot reached over 160,000 girls from 20,990 afterschool and summer programs! Even in the midst of COVID-induced obstacles and virtual learning, we were still able to make significant strides toward our goal thanks to the hard work and creativity of our funding, implementation, and coalition partners. Our community’s commitment to creating a more inclusive and equitable future of STEM learning for ALL girls is inspiring.
Given that evaluation and careful, evidence-based practices have been hallmarks of STEM Next, we are excited to share our successes, challenges and lessons learned with you all in the Million Girls Moonshot Year 1 Evaluation Report. We have gained invaluable insights in year one and we are excited to expand our reach to even more girls across the 50 states in year two. We hope you will continue to support us in this important journey, because only together, with our Moonshot partners, champions, and friends, can we make our Moonshot a reality.
Thank you all,
Ron Ottinger and Teresa Drew
