STEM on the Move: SoLA Robotics

Access to tech and creative industry employment

Central LA South LA Gateway Cities South Bay County of Los Angeles (select only if your project has a countywide benefit) City of Los Angeles (select only if your project has a citywide benefit) LAUSD (select only if you have a district-wide partnership)

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

In too many communities across Los Angeles, the future of technology feels out of reach. Schools lack robotics equipment. Students face transportation barriers to after-school enrichment. Families often cannot afford private tech camps or clubs. As a result, entire neighborhoods are excluded from early exposure to the very skills that define the future economy, not due to lack of talent, but lack of access. This digital divide limits not only academic growth, but also confidence, opportunity, and career imagination. SoLA Robotics is building the Mobile STEM Lab to directly address this inequity by taking our highly successful program on the road. The lab is more than a vehicle, it’s a mobile learning ecosystem that meets students where they are, delivering high-quality instruction, hands-on tools, and positive mentorship. We know that access alone is not enough; transformation requires consistency, relationships, and relevance. That’s what we’re driving toward, equity on wheels.

This grant will fund the activation of SoLA Robotics’ Mobile STEM Lab, a visually striking, fully equipped vehicle that brings robotics and coding classes to the heart of communities that need it most. We’ll visit schools, parks, libraries, and family centers—places where access is lowest and potential is highest.
Our mobile lab will host weekly pop-up workshops teaching students to build and code robots, explore digital design, and solve real-world problems with tech. The van will be staffed by trained instructors and youth interns. Every visit will be hands-on, joyful, and high-impact.
We’ll partner with community orgs to co-host “STEM Saturdays,” youth showcases, and intergenerational tech days. For many kids, this will be their first time handling a robot, or hearing someone say, “You could do this for a living.”
This isn’t just a van. It’s a symbol: of what’s possible when the resources come to the student, instead of the other way around.

Upon success, students in under-resourced neighborhoods across Los Angeles will no longer be spectators in the tech economy, they’ll be confident, capable participants. The Mobile STEM Lab will bridge critical gaps in access by bringing robotics tools, skilled instructors, and real-world inspiration directly to where students live and learn. In five years, we envision a city where every student, regardless of zip code, regularly encounters high-quality STEM experiences through mobile activations. Thousands of youth will move from curiosity to competence through a clear pathway: first workshop, first competition, first leadership role, and eventually, first job. The lab will create visible momentum in communities often left out of innovation conversations, sparking interest, building confidence, and cultivating future engineers, technologists, and creators. It will also serve as a replicable model for other cities seeking to deliver equitable, community-embedded STEM access.