About STEM Girls Build LA
STEM Academy of Hollywood is a public pilot school in Hollywood. All of our students focus on one of two career pathway, medicine or engineering, preparing for the next generation of STEM jobs. In a low income neighborhood, with more than 97% of our students on free and reduced lunch, many of us are preparing to be the first in our families to graduate from high school and go college. Many of us are Latinx, but we have also welcomed Armenian American, African American, Korean American, Taiwanese American, and Thai American students. We are the bright, beautiful, motivated, and passionate female-identifying youth of Hollywood.
The STEM Girls Build LA Team has been active since 2015, when Ms. Hall (our advisor - HI MISS HALL!!) and just 6 girls began to plan big for a series of events targeted at undocumented students. We wanted to make an impact, and pushed ourselves to put together our first event - a health fair.
The Health Fair was a grand success - testing 40 people for HIV, giving away 50 medical kits, taking the blood pressure of more than 80 people, and attracting more than 100 students and family members! Interest in the team began to grow rapidly after the first event - the group ballooned to over 20 members, and by the conclusion of the next two events (a college fair and a mental wellness event), we realized we were going to need more events, and more partners!
In the years since, we have continued the Health Fair with ever-increasing participation and turnout, especially as we started to collaborate with the Medical Pathway Diabetes Presentations! We've also added a new fan-favorite, De-Stress day! In addition, we have started an initiative to provide girls at our school with easy access to menstrual products in our restrooms with free pads and tampons. We also wanted to focus on increasing awareness of different issues relating to sex ed, healthy relationships, and self-care, so we began to create and post newsletters in restrooms for our students to read focusing on a new topic every week. Even having sent all of our founding members off to college, our 2018-2019 team won a national award from Girls Build for our newsletters and events focused on helping all students get the resources and information they need to make healthy, self-aware choices. We have over 200 current and alumni members, and have partnered with Kaiser Permanente, Children's Hospital, Gateways Hospital, QueensCare and Saban Clinics, the J. Stein UCLA Mobile Eye Clinic, HOSA, the Department of Health, the Family Source Center, the Didi Hairsh Suicide Prevention Center, LAUSD Healthy Start, Pride Alliance, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, EduCare, and more!
As 2020 unfolded, our students became aware of how the issues of healthcare knowledge and access, as well as their contributing factors, affect our entire community. Our 2020-2021 focus was to push for full access to housing, physical and mental healthcare (including substance abuse treatment), and economic security for our entire community. We came out of the pandemic with a renewed enthusiasm for in-person events, bringing back the Health Fair, De-Stress Days, and getting all that sweet, sweet newsletter information back in front of students. In 2022-2023, we were able to push our funding further to include a Homeless Center Drive and provide pads to all the bathrooms on campus. We are educated, empowered, and enough: watch us build a better world!
The STEM Girls Build LA Team has been active since 2015, when Ms. Hall (our advisor - HI MISS HALL!!) and just 6 girls began to plan big for a series of events targeted at undocumented students. We wanted to make an impact, and pushed ourselves to put together our first event - a health fair.
The Health Fair was a grand success - testing 40 people for HIV, giving away 50 medical kits, taking the blood pressure of more than 80 people, and attracting more than 100 students and family members! Interest in the team began to grow rapidly after the first event - the group ballooned to over 20 members, and by the conclusion of the next two events (a college fair and a mental wellness event), we realized we were going to need more events, and more partners!
In the years since, we have continued the Health Fair with ever-increasing participation and turnout, especially as we started to collaborate with the Medical Pathway Diabetes Presentations! We've also added a new fan-favorite, De-Stress day! In addition, we have started an initiative to provide girls at our school with easy access to menstrual products in our restrooms with free pads and tampons. We also wanted to focus on increasing awareness of different issues relating to sex ed, healthy relationships, and self-care, so we began to create and post newsletters in restrooms for our students to read focusing on a new topic every week. Even having sent all of our founding members off to college, our 2018-2019 team won a national award from Girls Build for our newsletters and events focused on helping all students get the resources and information they need to make healthy, self-aware choices. We have over 200 current and alumni members, and have partnered with Kaiser Permanente, Children's Hospital, Gateways Hospital, QueensCare and Saban Clinics, the J. Stein UCLA Mobile Eye Clinic, HOSA, the Department of Health, the Family Source Center, the Didi Hairsh Suicide Prevention Center, LAUSD Healthy Start, Pride Alliance, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, EduCare, and more!
As 2020 unfolded, our students became aware of how the issues of healthcare knowledge and access, as well as their contributing factors, affect our entire community. Our 2020-2021 focus was to push for full access to housing, physical and mental healthcare (including substance abuse treatment), and economic security for our entire community. We came out of the pandemic with a renewed enthusiasm for in-person events, bringing back the Health Fair, De-Stress Days, and getting all that sweet, sweet newsletter information back in front of students. In 2022-2023, we were able to push our funding further to include a Homeless Center Drive and provide pads to all the bathrooms on campus. We are educated, empowered, and enough: watch us build a better world!
