The Charles River Collaboratory is an equity-focused, youth-led, makerspace head quartered at the Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation in partnership with the Boston College Lynch School of Education and Department of Engineering. We elevate youth voices as leaders, changemakers, and mentors. In this way youth are designing and transforming the future of their communities through their work.
An unmaker space is one where youth lead. In many cases maker spaces are gatekept by adults. Driven by adult interests, goals, and wants. The Charles River Collaboratory is just the opposite. Here youth are enabled, empowered, and engaged in learning, and identifying what they want to explore and learn and teach others. It is a space where were everyone can do STEM, all voices are valued, mistakes are valued, and where curisoity and ideas are transformed into solutions that positively impact the community.
The Collaboratory is a space for youth to design solutions to social justice and equity issues they see in their community
The leadership team is led by Waltham High school youth students who range from sophomores to seniors. They steer the direction of the collaboratory. They serve as near-peer mentors and role models to their younger peers.
Central to programming and learning at the Charles River Collaboratory is near-peer mentoring where high school students serves as mentors and role models to their younger peers. At the Collaboratory we are creating a community of mentors and trust, where more experienced youth are role models and mentors to their younger peers. Embedded in this approach is the valuing of youth voices, the recognition that everyone can do STEM, deconstruction of typical power structures where different experiences and cultural values are considered valuable assets in problem solving.
We are thankful for our funders. The National Science Foundation through grant #s, 2048994 and 2241766. An anonymous foundation, and a Constellation Energy2Education award, Boston College Schiller Institute, and Lynch School of Education Collaborative Fellows Grant Program.
