SET IT OFF - Soaring and Exploring Tech In Our Future Frontiers

K-12 STEAM education

Antelope Valley South LA San Fernando Valley South Bay

Pilot or new project, program, or initiative (testing or implementing a new idea)

Youth ages 11-19 in Black and brown communities across Carson, South LA, San Fernando Valley and Lancaster face a tech literacy gap threatening to lock them out of high-paying careers. These youth, often from low-income single female-led households, struggle with underachievement and risk exclusion from STEAM opportunities that are abundant in LA County—from aerospace to LA’s multi-billion dollar creative economy. While affluent students gain AI fluency through private resources, our youth lack access to game-changing technology education. LA's aerospace, tech, and creative industries increasingly demand AI-literate workers, yet these communities remain disconnected from access to resources. As AI rapidly advances, those without literacy face permanent economic exclusion. Without immediate intervention leveraging our team’s aerospace, AI, and creative industry connections, an entire generation may miss life-changing opportunities, perpetuating poverty and widening digital divides.

This initiative seeks to extend our programming beyond the academic school year and expand program content to include STEAM activities. Currently our four signature programs, CARES, Welcome to Manhood, Welcome to Womanhood, and Emerging Leaders are focused on life skills, communication skills, improving school performance, and exposing youth to people, experiences, and places they would otherwise not have access to. We recognize the need to prepare our youth for a rapidly changing world driven by technology. The Aerospace industry, Creative Economies, and emerging entrepreneurial opportunities demand tech literacy. It is important that our youth not only consume technology for entertainment (video games), but become producers of tech innovation, and gain literacy in business processes that are increasingly AI driven. The program will provide exposure to tech professionals, hands on workshops in aerospace technology, and a variety of AI tools, as well as training program facilitators as we move to integrate and scale our tech initiative for sustainability. Learning and incorporating AI automation for routine business and social media tasks, will also ease the burden of labor intensive administrative tasks for more effective use of time. This project has the potential create revenue opportunities for the organization in addition to serving the youth and breaking cycles of poverty through the pursuit higher education in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math

If this pilot project succeeds, we will have a scaleable, replicable model that will inspire and prepare a generation of LA's youth to pursue higher education and career opportunities in tech industries and empower them with confidence in their innovative potential to pursue entrepreneurship and generate revenue using the business tools of the future. They will be able to carry their skills and knowledge forward in their communities building on the foundation of life skills and values they learn through our signature programs.