NEW ORLEANS — STEM NOLA has received a $1 million donation from Boeing towards building their New Orleans East science education facility, according to our partners from NOLA.com.
The facility will cost $15 million, according to group founder and CEO Calvin Mackie, a former engineering professor at Tulane University.
The group offers various educational opportunities including weekly science tutorials at parks and during and after-school virtual lessons and programming.
The group will also launch city-wide after-school programming at NORD public libraries and facilities in the next few months.
The property for the new science center was donated by Ochsner Health, and Mackie said that designs for the new building have been completed.
There has not been a date set for groundbreaking, but the facility has already received numerous funds - $100k from Mackie himself, $2.79 million in a grant from the U.S. Department of Defense, $1.25 million from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, $1 million in money from the CARES Act, and $2 million in state capital outlay funding.
Mackie said the Boeing donation "kicked open the door for us to start on fundraising across with nation with other corporations and locally in New Orleans."
Mackie said his goal is to make STEM a recreational activity as commonplace as football or basketball.
“For the children of New Orleans to have access to this type of space, and the type of equipment and this type of technology hopefully from cradle to career. I think we could change the trajectory of many families, if not the community,” Mackie said.
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