Our Crowdfunding Groups
Update: New goal is $6,000!
Thank you all for your donations! Due to incredibly generous contributions from our patrons, we have already reached our initial goal amount of $1,000! The overwhelming support has convinced us to add $5,000 to our original goal and set a stretch goal of $6,000 for the remaining time of our fundraising campaign. We realize this is quite an ambitious goal, but depending on how much more we raise, we will be able to operate comfortably for 2 additional years, buy more supplies for students, and maybe even sponsor another school!
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The Urban Schools Initiative (USI) is an outreach program piloted in inner-city Chicago in 2004. USI supported new Science Olympiad teams with financial resources and customized mentoring, thereby removing some of the barriers between inner-city students and team-based STEM competitions. USI entails a 3-year start-up plan wherein the sponsoring entity helps a school start a new Science Olympiad team and then gradually tapers off direct financial assistance as the team becomes self-sustaining and Science Olympiad becomes more established in the school district.
ATX Science Olympiad (SciOly) seeks to replicate this success in AISD with a focus on Title I schools and under-represented minority (URM) students. We strongly believe in the benefit of fun, competitive, and team-based STEM exploration, but recognize that Title I schools are often under-resourced and understandably face significant barriers in offering these types of experiences to their students. The ATX SciOly iteration of USI seeks to provide financial resources and a robust mentorship network to a small cohort of local Title I schools with the purpose of helping them start and sustain Science Olympiad teams. We aim to increase the accessibility of Science Olympiad to these schools using a 3-year model similar to the one piloted in Chicago.
These funds will cover:
About ATX SciOly
As a branch of the nationally acclaimed Science Olympiad organization, ATX Scioly seeks to diversify and expand the STEM community through academic enrichment and healthy student competition. We host biannual tournaments for hundreds of middle and high school students, consisting of 28 events that cover science topics -- including engineering and biology -- beyond the scope of the normal classroom. By encouraging independent learning, we foster development of team structure, critical thinking, and problem solving skills in students from a very young age.
The cost listed above is the per-student cost of Texas state registration fees.
This is the retail price of an Arduino microcontroller board. Students who compete in robotics and electric vehicle events may need to get one of these for their devices.
This is the typical price of a balsa flight kit that includes the materials needed to build two planes.
$175 is the total Texas state registration fee for a full team of 15 students.
