Event: Give where you Live! Come to NextFab’s Open House

NextFab‘s seven-week youth program designed to teach students maker skills is coming to end. The maker space, also called the “gym for innovators,”  is hosting an open house to celebrate student projects completed for the program and also fund-raise an initiative to create maker spaces within public schools. (Generocity covered this initiative in a previous story, “Philadelphia Science Teachers Use Crowdfunding Campaigns to Start Makerspaces in Schools“).

The program taught maker skills to 20 students from Chester A. Arthur and Edwin A. Stanton schools.  Both are located within a few blocks of Next Fab.

“I think the kids have not only learned technology, but they’ve learned life skills,” said Jonathan Tekac, director of member and community services at NextFab. 

While Tekac didn’t want to spoil the projects before they were revealed at the open house, he said that each of the teams from the schools worked together in different ways to design the projects in Adobe Illustrator that were then laser cut by the NextFab team.

Tekac added that NextFab is excited to have people from surrounding neighborhood engaging with the space.

“It’s really going to be about community. Point Breeze, Graduate Hospital, and surrounding communities in general–we’re just excited to have them interact,” he said.

Tekac added they were working local food providers to provide healthy and nutritious foods, like vegetables and fruits, especially ones that some of the youth participants might not get to eat because they don’t have access to them.

At the event, people can donate to help support the maker spaces located in the schools through the South of South Neighborhood Association, who helped  create the project by introducing NextFab to Stanton and Arthur leadership. SOSNA will be distributing the funds equally to the two schools. Donations can also be made online through SOSNA here by putting “MAKERSPACE” in the comments section. In addition, for a week after the event, NextFab will donate the orientation fees from anyone who signs up to use NextFab’s space. 

In the future, NextFab plans on having classes to help teachers start makerspaces in their own schools, so that they can teach maker skills to more students than they currently have the capacity to reach.

“Our idea is that if we can teach 10 teachers what they need to know, then hopefully then they can reach 100 students, rather than us just teaching 10,” Tekac said.

When: June 7, 2pm-6pm
Where: NextFab, 2025 Washington Ave, Philadelphia, PA, 19146
More Info: NextFab’s Website