STEAM Discovery Festival

 Our mission is to promote STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics) education through hands-on activities and exhibits.  We produce an annual one-day event called the STEAM Discovery Festival.  This used to be an admission fee event, but we now rely on grants and sponsorships to provide free admission to the public.  We changed to this model to remove and barriers for under privileged students from attending.  This also avoids any embarrassment with requesting a hardship tickets, offered in the past.   Please visit steamdiscoveryfestival.com/exhibits to see some of the activities we provide.  In addition to the Benicia Makerspace activities, we engage with local schools and makers within our community to have STEAM related displays and activities.  Your grant will allow us to provide hundreds of free tickets to the community regardless of their economic status, normally a $20-$30 value.  We use the funds to buy materials for the different activities, provide food and tee shirts for our volunteers, and pay for new activities for the festival, every year we build new activities to expand the festival.  If we raise more funds than the minimum required to sustain the Makerspace and purchase the needed supplies, we can use those funds to have paid professional activities and exhibits.  Last year we were able to hire a professional picture painting activity that also did face painting, attendees got to keep their painted canvases.

 In addition to financial support, we are also looking for volunteers to help operate our activities the day of the event.  We also welcome local companies to have STEAM related booths at the SDF, describing your technologies to the attendees, and provide insight to career possibilities and the educational requirements (for the older attendees).  Interactive displays are especially appreciated.