The Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh announced last week that 12 regional schools have launched crowdfunding campaigns to raise funds to sustainably create makerspaces and maker programs in their schools.

Provident Charter School in Troy Hill is one of the 12 schools that has launched a campaign.

The school was selected by the Children’s Museum to take part in the “Making Spaces: Expanding Maker Education Across the Nation” project in March 2017.  With help from the Museum, the schools produced videos and supporting material for their crowdfunding efforts, which are featured on the crowdfunding platform GoFundMe. Crowdfunding has been shown to be a great way to build community understanding and interest around initiatives – in this case, the growing demand for maker education. Backers can pledge funds to each campaign online for at least 30 days.

The campaigns can be accessed here by clicking here.  

Once the campaigns close, the Children’s Museum will provide ongoing professional development to the schools’ educators, space design consultation, and access to resources for sustainable makerspaces that will continue past the duration of the Making Spaces program. The Making Spaces program runs through the end of the 2017-2018 school year.

Making Spaces: Expanding Maker Education Across the Nation is a partnership of Google, Maker Education Initiative (Maker Ed) and Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh to help schools define, design and lead fundraising for building their makerspaces.

The Children’s Museum, which is recognized by the White House as a national leader in making and learning, is the lead “hub” of 10 hubs in the Making Spaces project. A hub is a museum, library, school district or community organization that will provide maker education expertise and guidance to 5-10 nearby schools. As the lead “hub,” the Children’s Museum also provides ongoing professional development to the schools’ educators, space design consultation and access to resources for sustainable makerspaces. The other Making Spaces hubs are: Scott Family Amazeum in Bentonville, AR; KID Museum in Bethesda, MD; Edventure Children’s Museum in Columbia, SC; Albemarle County Public Schools in Charlottesville, VA; Digital Youth Network in Chicago, IL; Montshire Museum of Science in Norwich, VT; San Mateo County Office of Education in Redwood City, CA; and The Bubbler at Madison Public Library in Madison, WI.

About Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh

Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh welcomes more than 302,500 visitors annually and provides “real stuff” experiences for play, learning and fun. Children’s Museum’s permanent exhibit MAKESHOP^® was built in 2011 to create a space for children and families to make, play and design using the same materials, tools and processes used by professional artists, builders, programmers and creators of all kinds. The Museum’s maker-focused initiatives include hosting annual Maker Boot Camp professional development for educators, helping to set up dozens of maker spaces locally, leading national research studying the impact of making and learning and hosting Maker Faire Pittsburgh 2015, 2016,and 2017.  For more information, visit www.pittsburghkids.org, follow @pghkids and @makeshoppgh.

About Maker Ed

Maker Ed is a nonprofit organization that provides educators with the training, resources, and community of support they need to facilitate engaging learning experiences with youth through maker education — a hands-on, youth-driven, and open-ended learning approach. Through this work, Maker Ed plays a national leadership role in both broadening access to and deepening the impact of maker education for youth. Maker Ed is a project of the Tides Center, a registered 501(c)3 non-profit public charity. For more information, visit the Maker Ed website and follow @MakerEdOrg for updates.

About Google’s Making & Science

Making & Science is an initiative from Google to inspire future scientists and makers. Learn more about our programs, events, media, and the new Science Journal app at makingscience.withgoogle.com.