While the Million Girls Moonshot Initiative’s goal is focused on increasing the number of girls with an engineering mindset and a STEM identity— the Initiative will benefit all students, improving the overall quality of all afterschool STEM opportunities and lifting up both boys and girls as they become future innovators. As STEM system builders we work to increase access to STEM learning opportunities in afterschool and summer learning programs. Additionally, we need to explore how to support programs to engage and nurture all young people’s interest in STEM learning. We need to address how programs are designing and implementing programming to broaden participation in STEM for learners in poverty, learners of color, learners in rural areas, and girls in STEM. Working with national experts, STEMNext has developed an Equity and Inclusion Framework that we hope will be a useful guide for supporting programs in this transformation. A framework is a way to illustrate the particular concepts and variables that are connected to a specific issue (e.g. Equity and Inclusion). It can serve as a map, illustrating connections, and a way of identifying strategies and actions for addressing the specific issue(s)
