The Scratch Foundation
For Immediate Release
October 24, 2023
The Scratch Foundation Joins the STEMM Opportunity Alliance to Achieve STEMM Equity
Partners in the alliance will work to attain systemic change in STEMM education for children from historically marginalized communities
October 24, 2023 - Boston, MA - The Scratch Foundation—a nonprofit dedicated to providing young people with digital tools and opportunities to imagine, create, share, and learn—announced today its partnership with the STEMM Opportunity Alliance (SOA), a groundbreaking national effort by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) to build a national STEMM ecosystem rooted in equity and inclusion. The SOA will co-construct with its partners and communities a national strategic plan for diversity and equity in STEMM by focusing on coalition-building, data collection for shared outcomes, and shared learnings.
"We are proud to join the STEMM Opportunity Alliance. At the Scratch Foundation, we believe that all children, especially those from historically marginalized communities, deserve the opportunity to imagine, create, share, and learn through creative coding,” said Dr. Maria Janelli, Director of Research and Strategy at the Scratch Foundation. “Together with colleagues around the country, we can create a more inclusive and equitable future for everyone in STEMM."
Through its groundbreaking platforms—ScratchJr and Scratch, the world’s largest coding community for kids—and its programmatic work, the Scratch Foundation will help the alliance achieve key areas of action, including:
working to ensure that students, teachers, parents, and communities, have adequate support to participate in and contribute to science and technology;
and scale solutions, like Scratch and ScratchJr, that are designed to promote equity and inclusion in the classroom.
Since its creation just 16 years ago, Scratch has amassed more than 105 million registrations. Every day, more than 300,000 coding projects are created by children around the world. Scratch is free and available in more than 70 languages, enabling learners and educators from all backgrounds to create and learn.
The Scratch Foundation spreads creative, caring, collaborative, equitable approaches to coding and learning around the world, with a focus on children from historically marginalized communities. By teaming up with the STEMM Opportunity Alliance, the Scratch Foundation continues to champion the idea that digital creative expression is not limited to a select few but is an opportunity that should be available to all.
The Scratch Foundation is one of 135 SOA partners, including 3M, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Chan Zuckeberg Initiative, IBM, Microsoft, and the Spencer Foundation.
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The Scratch Foundation
The Scratch Foundation is a nonprofit dedicated to providing young people with digital tools and opportunities to imagine, create, share, and learn. Through innovation and collaboration, the Scratch Foundation spreads creative, caring, collaborative, equitable approaches to coding and learning around the world. Scratch, the world’s largest coding community for children, was originally developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab and publicly launched in 2007. The platform provides millions of young people from all backgrounds with the opportunity to develop their voices and express themselves by creating their own stories, games, and animations.
Press Contacts
Carlos Diaz Barriga
Director of Marketing and Communications
press@scratch.mit.edu