Help send Johnie to the National Youth Leadership Forum!

This fundraiser is for my son, Johnie, who was nominated by one of his teachers for the incredible opportunity of attending the National Youth Leadership Forum: Explore STEM at Cal Berkeley in July. The program costs $3545 and we are raising funds to send him as well as help cover room and board for the week!

Johnie is a fun, loving 12 year old who has a passion for soccer, and also has excelled in the classroom! He started a new school this year for 6th grade and maintained straight A’s while continuing to play for a high level soccer team as well as play sports for his school. This experience would be an incredible opportunity for him and we are excited to get him there! For the application he was asked to write a short essay about what he was most interested in learning about as it pertains to STEM. Here is his essay:

“When I think of a career that I would want to have when I grow up, I think of something I would be passionate about. My family members have all made it a priority to attain professions that they love. My mom went back to college after her first college degree to do something she really wanted to do, become a Registered Nurse. My mom's partner is passionate about his job in finance and business. My grandparents are both scientists and professors and do biomedical research about hearing and deafness. I even have an aunt who became part of a Catholic monastery in her 50s, because service and spiritually are her passions. My great grandfather was an engineer who worked for Disney and helped create some of the DisneyLand rides that are still there today. Aerospace engineering is one of those things that I am excited to learn about, and something I could become passionate about. Why do I believe this? because it combines activities I love, such as building things, math, robotics, designing, creativity, and problem solving. I am particularly interested in learning more about how spacecraft are constructed and how they function. With aerospace engineering, the opportunities to help our society, while learning about the unknown (such as distant parts of space and other planets), really draws me in. I was lucky enough to grow up in Altadena, near one of the most famous NASA labs in California, The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). A lot of my friends' parents work at

JPL. One of them was even a part of the group that created and deployed MISE (Mapping Imaging Spectrometer for Europa), which is an infrared spectrometer that was created so that we could study Europa's surface to see if it could possibly support life. Aerospace engineering doesn't just contribute to technical methods or study space, but it affects human life in general. This really excites me because it makes the possibilities feel endless, and I would love to be a part of what comes next.”