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MAST Academy senior and Silver Knight for Vocational Training winner Leandra Hall started her community service at a young age.
At 13, she teamed up with CodeFeverMiami and BotsForAll to launch AfroTechie. The project started as a service project for the Girl Scouts and evolved into her successful Gold Award project.
“Its goal is to democratize access to STEM [science, technology, engineering, mathematics] despite socio economic backgrounds,” she said. “I hosted programs on coding and robotics to teach the fundamentals of computer science.”
She wrote the curriculum and in the summer she worked with children from Overtown and kids from Coconut Grove in the fall.
She also put the curriculum online to enable others to host their own programs.
“If I’m trying to bring more STEM to more of these kids, more people have to get involved,” she said.
The program in Overtown ran from July to early August of 2019 at a collaborative office space called a Space Called Tribe. BotsForAll and CodeFeverMiami supplied materials for the classes. Eight children attended the summer program and 15 children attended in the fall at Virrick Park Library.
“Everything I needed was typically supplied in kind,” she said. “But for some small items, I used my cookie money to purchase.”
One of the requirements of the Girl Scout Gold Award is that a project has a sustainability aspect. Her project will be kept gong by CodeFeverMiami and BotsForAll when she goes off to college.
Hall did a pre-class survey and then a post-survey with the kids to see how much they learned.
“Hopefully there was change,” Hall said. “That was the goal, to change their perception regarding STEM.”
She spent a couple of months planning for the summer program and three months planning for the fall program.
She adjusted the curriculum between the two sessions once she learned how she could keep kids more engaged in the program.
“Curriculum wise, the big thing is that I added a robotics competition at the end so the kids could put their skills into practice,” Hall said.
Overall, she spent 80 hours working on the program that was a continuation of her Silver Award. For her Silver Award she was a guest lecturer at Camp Honeyshines about STEM.
“I drew upon on my own experiences with STEM,” she said. “I always had access to stem. Both in elementary and middle school.”
In fact, Hall already was driven to do more with STEM in middle school so she worked to establish the Robotics Club at her school, The Young Women’s Preparatory Academy.
Although that school did have a high school component, she switched to MAST for high school. MAST was established as a STEM school.
At MAST, she was involved in the Performing Arts Club, this yeas as vice president.
“I did a lot of theater productions there,” she said.
Hall was president of the Debate Club and a member of the Technology Associate and the Black Student Association.
While she started her middle school robotics club, she planned to join the MAST Robotics Club after she finished AfroTechie, but COVID-19 cancelled robotics competitions by the time she was ready to get back into the game.
Next year, Hall is going to Atlanta to attend an HBCU (Historically Black College/University), Spelman College. There she will double major in computer science and theater.
“I’m passionate about both,” she said.
