1   2
 
The Boys & Girls Club of Greater Washington is leading the way in seamlessly integrating the Arts with STEM to result in high-quality, after-school STEAM programming. Pioneered in the Clubs by 10-year employee, Tony Small and championed by our Women’s Leadership Group, BGCGW has forged strong partnerships that allow us to develop programming that engages members from middle school through high school. Organizations including Pepco, the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, the National Theater and the Q?rius Educational Center at the Smithsonian Institute, as well as amazing individual funders, enable us to expose young people to careers and help prepare them for opportunities in STEM. Why is this important?
From a piece published by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) in 2014, “The future of the economy is in STEM,” says James Brown, the executive director of the STEM Education Coalition in Washington, D.C. “That’s where the jobs of tomorrow will be.”   BLS projected overall STEM employment to grow about 13 percent between 2012 and 2022.
Also important is that we recognize and address the connection between Art and Technology. Today’s youth definitely know this and they love learning and working in this space. MIT graduate John Maeda, named by Esquire as one of the 21 most important people in the 21st century has led the movement to transform STEM to STEAM by adding Art. He states: “I believe art and design are poised to transform our economy in the 21st century like science and technology did in the last century”.