Hello everyone! Our organization is excited to announce the ATX Science Olympiad: Urban Schools Initiative HornRaiser, a fundraising campaign aimed at supporting new Science Olympiad teams in local Title I schools. We greatly appreciate any financial support you can provide and would love if you shared our effort with anyone who will listen on social media!
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.