Three Cochrane high school students are about to kick off a program to help younger schools with their science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM) studies.
Alexis Larsen, Abigael Myers and Lily King and want to give youth in grades 1 to 6 extra help with school subjects to prepare them for the future, and in some cases, catch up from the COVID lockdown.
"Sometimes we don't always get like the opportunity to use STEAM in schools, or you don't get to really delve into it," says Abigael. "This is another way to do it, because sometimes you don't do things as often so you're not good at them, but you could be, but you just give up on them."
Alexis says youth were robbed of many experiences because of the pandemic, including educational opportunities.
"I think this project is going to become really important because there's so many children who struggled because of COVID and the pandemic locked up in their houses," says Alexis. "They didn't get the kind of education that they needed. I'm just hoping that we can support them through this and help them get what they lost, and they didn't get and help them have more opportunities to live the life that they never got to have locked in their house."
All three shared show when they struggled with one subject it led to losing confidence in their other studies.
"I felt bad to be good at one part of school, but not the rest, and it left me believing I wasn't good at anything," says Lily. "With this program, you can learn it and get better at it. You may not be good at one thing, but that doesn't mean you're not good at something else."
The three have prepared through the summer to launch the program and wanted to wait until kids settled into their studies.
An information session is scheduled for Sept. 28 at BGC at 2:30 p.m. The program kicks off Oct. 12 with sessions being held for students in grades 1 to 3 at the Cochrane Public Library and those in grades 4 to 6 at BGC from 1 to 3 p.m.