The Optimist Daily · 5 hours ago

Student Makers: Teen Volunteers Are Teaching Stem Across Three Continents | the Optimist Daily

A group of teenagers in California once spent countless hours 3D-printing 150 LEGO-inspired airplane kits by hand and shipped them to a school in Kenya - and that was just the beginning. Student Makers, a nonprofit run almost entirely by teens, operates on a simple but quietly radical principle: students who finish the program turn around and teach the next round, creating a chain of knowledge that has now reached classrooms in Kenya, India, and across the United States. In Migori, a ninth-grader named Jacob - who learned robotics through the program - now leads his school's robotics team and wants to be a rocket engineer at NASA. "You are a game-changer," said Ruth Agongo, a teacher at Kenya Relief Academy. "Whatever you have taught us, we are putting into action because the kids are really excited by the technology." There is something worth sitting with here: young people who could not yet vote are quietly dismantling the idea that geography determines destiny, one 3D printer and one lesson at a time.