Avnet Cares supported the Girl Scouts, Arizona Cactus Pine Council, with a grant for their Summer STEAM Challenge, along with partner onsemi. The challenge was a friendly two-month competition where girls completed STEAM activities to score points and earn a special patch. The idea to host the challenge was due to the fact that out of all badges earned by girls in AZ last year, only 15% were STEAM-related. The Girl Scouts leadership wanted to ignite girls’ interest in their STEAM programs.
Avnet Cares was excited to be a part of this program and offered to host girls for tours of the Avnet Integrated facility in Chandler. The facility hosted two groups of Girl Scouts, with over 20 girls in total.
The team at Morelos embraced the STEAM Challenge and was able to help the girls complete three of the activities to earn their patch! In addition to hosting the tours, the team gathered soon-to-be discarded technology components that the girls could use for a mixed-media art project – they were excited to take home bags of parts. Another activity needed was to learn more about one of the letters in “STEM”. That was certainly covered in the extensive tour.
The final activity was to learn about the engineering design process. The tour guides customized the tour to add the component of learning about the engineering design process. They reviewed the seven stages of the process and then showed examples of each stage while on the tour. The team set aside parts and components that the girls could pick up and investigate. The girls were incredibly inquisitive and asked many insightful questions throughout the tour.
Girl Scout Daphne shared that her favorite part of the tour was learning about the SNOO baby bassinet, a product that Avnet Integrated manages. Daphne shared, “The bassinets were electrical, and had motion sensors to know when the baby was fussy or not feeling well. To me that was pretty cool!”
Hopefully stopping by Avnet helped some of the girls accomplish the Summer STEAM Challenge! Avnet’s RISE women’s group, along with volunteers from onsemi, spent some time earlier in the spring writing custom congratulations notes to every girl who completes the challenge so each girl that completes the challenge will get a note from one of Avnet’s own!
This program is part of Avnet Cares’ overall focus on supporting STEM education for youth. A grant was also awarded to Girl Scouts of Northeast Texas for their STEM program and many other programs across the globe.