Engineering that isn't reserved for kids whose parents can pay for it.

We swap textbook memorization for hands-on engineering and experimental discovery, turning community spaces into collaborative labs where mistakes become the starting point for problem-solving.

STEM & Science for All exists because hands-on science is expensive, and the students who would love it most are usually the ones who never get offered it. The program runs free of charge at the Mount Vernon Public Library, as part of the library's Youth Community Outreach Program. Every material — balsa, gears, wire, microscope slides — is covered by the program, not by families.

It runs on a materials budget in the low hundreds of dollars. That constraint shaped the curriculum more than anything else: every project had to be interesting, durable, and cheap enough that a student could ruin one and start again. Rubber bands and balsa turn out to be excellent teachers.