In 2021 YTC launched a virtual summer program robotics for 25 youth in the Chicagoland area. In 2022 those students are ready to be the instructors for a group of  250 new students in Chicago and across North America.

 

This is the power of our approach in introducing robotics across underserved communities all over the country and beyond. It’s a concept that worked well in our pandemic-inspired model and now we are testing it’s scalability.  It’s a system where every student becomes a teacher with the opportunity to be rewarded for helping the community grow. In honing this approach, not only are we introducing new students to a STEM Education, but we are also building leaders and problem solvers who are prepared to take what they have learned and build a career path in a technology-driven economy.

 We’ve been working on this for a few years. YTC’s clubs in Cicero and Evanston IL added robotics in 2017 and YTC students taught robotics to our partners in Durango, Mexico, teaching the class in Spanish on Zoom in 2018. YTC held two virtual summer camps in 2020, 2021 that served 65 students and despite the challenges of distance, culture, and sometimes language over seventy percent of students completed the program. In the process, YTC has created a team of experienced student leaders and teachers ready to lead the new expansion.

We are not going into this alone. The students you recruit to join us are in good hands. YTC has a vision that ensures every community has access to a digital future, and through grassroots contributions, we have been able to reach more teens, more families, and more non-profits who may otherwise not have access to today’s modern digital tools. However, for this new expansive effort we have engaged Left Bank Consulting as supporting YTC’s strategic growth. This includes managing the 2022 Introduction to Robotics Summer Camp.  Marc Siciliano, Founder and CEO of Left Bank Consulting is an international education consultant with three decades of experience supporting teachers, schools and school districts to improve and adopt STEM strategies.