Working with The Tech & Junior League to Promote STEM

Working with The Tech & Junior League to Promote STEM

By Mallika Yeleswarapu '17

Working with The Tech Museum, seniors Jasmine Gupta and Mallika Yeleswarapu focused their Senior Service Learning project on girls in STEM but, more specifically, on creating long term support systems to help girls stay involved in STEM fields.

“Around the same time we approached the museum, they had received grant money from the Junior League for the same issue,” explains Mallika. “The Junior League is an organization of women dedicated to supporting the voluntarism and leadership of women in the community. With the support of The Tech, Jasmine and I created a workshop for parents where we gave the perspective of ourselves and our peers on what it's like to get into STEM. In addition, we created content for a printed parent toolkit, which we are working to print and distribute.”

Mallika and Jasmine were invited to the general meeting of the Junior League of Palo Alto-Mid Peninsula to speak about their project last week. “It was exciting for us to talk about what we had accomplished and to show that the money that the Junior League had given to The Tech really had done good work. After Jasmine and I presented, we saw other organizations presenting and being given granted money from the Junior League. It was really heartening to see people in our community investing in causes that we care about and advocate for. And, we got to meet some really inspiring women!”