Parts and Crafts: Make, play, build!
Parts and Crafts is a kid makerspace and DIY tinkering camp based in Somerville Massachusetts. Combined programs serve roughly 300 kids each year, the majority of whom live locally here in Somerville. Basic principles include:
- Building, making, taking stuff apart, learning by doing!
- Kid choice! We offer a bunch of activities, kids choose what they work on.
- Sliding scale. Families set their price based on what they can afford.
We spend a lot of our time taking apart computers, building kid-sized hovercrafts, programming in Scratch, building, crafting, inventing, playing, and having a blast making things and exploring the world around us. It's really fun!
Why we need your help!
We've been running in Somerville for five years. From the beginning we've run on sliding scale, with families are encouraged to set their price based on what they can afford. This is a very popular option and there's obviously clear demand for it:
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67% of kids in Somerville are eligible for free or reduced lunch. That's almost twice the state average! It's very unlikely that kids who are eligible for food assistance are going to be able to afford camp even at sliding scale rates.
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Over 50% - or 191 kids - who came to camp last summer used sliding scale. 64 of those families paid under $10 a day. That's a great start, but we still aren't reach anywhere near the number of kids we could be serving.
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Last year, the total cost of subsidizing these slots was $64,019. Given that we are almost 100% participant funded, this means that the cost of these programs comes directly out of the bottom line.
If you paid full price last year, THANK YOU!
Without your help, we would never have been able to offer such a high number of reduced cost slots! We're hoping to do even better this year and offer a baseline of 15 slots totally free of charge.
Starting this year we are offering full scholarships to kids eligible for free school lunch
Our initial goal is to enroll 15 kids totally free of charge. Scholarships are good for up to four weeks of camp, a value of $1200 per kid. We're also hoping to expand our sliding scale program which supports reduced cost slots starting at $75/week.
Your donation will support a month of building, playing, and inventing -- Parts and Crafts kids spend their summer 3D printing, building motorcars and marshmallow launchers, playing strategy games, learning to solder, learning how to sew their own costumes, folding kinetic origami, programming video games, drawing comics, and working with staff in our shop to make and invent and build.
It's an amazing learning experience, and we do it on a shoestring budget for an ever-growing number of kids. We need your help to make it a reality this summer!
Cost breakdown:
At full price, a week of camp costs $300. An additional 15 kids will cost us approximately $18,000, which is about 2/3 of what a full-time staffer makes in a year. Here's what it costs to support a kid at camp for one week:
- Staff (1:6 ratio): $100
- Materials: $20
- Rent + overhead: $15
- Insurance: $15
- Field trips: $10
- Snacks: $5
Just to cover expenses for 15 kids, we would need to bring in $10,000. We're aiming to raise at least half the cost through fundraising -- $5000 -- so we can guarantee free spots without compromising our ability to offer sliding scale.
To put that into perspective: The average price paid per week is around $200, but right now 20% of the kids who are *already* signed up for camp are coming for under $150/week, or just barely under what it costs to run -- and we're hoping to add 15 totally free slots on top of that. It's a big job and we need your help!
What happens if we don't meet our goal? Nothing. It's not *limited* to 15 slots, and we have never turned people people away for lack of ability to pay.
What happens if we exceed our goal? We throw a giant party! More kids can come, we get to run more cool stuff, and we can take a breath and not worry about going broke trying to make it all come together. Extra funds will either go towards additional scholarships or the $64,000 currently spent on sliding scale.
What's so great about this program?
Parts and Crafts is a hackerspace for kids -- We provide access to tools, resources, and materials, and then we give them the inspiration and space to get started! With our small shop space and a kickass staff of tinkerers, we offer STEM resources that many kids will never have access to in traditional educational environments -- and we do it in a fun, friendly, low-key space where kids have lots of space and support to do their own thing.
We value kid autonomy. Kids don't just veg out if you "let them do what they want." They program video games. They build treehouses. They organize elaborate games of capture the flag. They write stories and program simple robots for sumo-style wrestling. They glue motors and LEDs to EVERYTHING. They investigate, ask questions, experiment, and play. We provide support, help, guidance, and inspiration -- and an array of awesome activities -- but the goal is to give kids the resources to be creative and independent thinkers.
High-quality affordable STEM programming: We have a crew of amazing kids who love learning but often struggle in school. The solution to this isn't more testing -- it's creating awesome, accessible, low-stakes opportunities for kids to engage with real projects in a personally meaningful way, while giving them the space to play, run around, take stuff apart, and build things together.
Real-world mentorship. Our staff includes professional catapult-builders, self-taught zinesters, HONK musicians, artists, carpenters, computer programmers, citizen scientists, lifelong engineers, tinkerers, and inventors. It is community-supported education at its best -- put kids in a room with a bunch of grown-ups who already have amazing projects, and let them make and build stuff together.
Parts and Crafts is a fantastic community. We want to make it available to anyone, no questions asked! And the truth is, there are lots of kids who can only come if it's free. We want Parts and Crafts to be accessible to ALL kids -- not just the ones who can afford it. If you agree, donate today and help us reach our goal!
Why don't you just apply for a grant?
We would LOVE it if there were "just grants available!" but there are very, very few grants available to programs that serve mixed-income communities. Pretty much everything we do we have to figure out how to pay for ourselves.
For us, the answer is "community supported education" -- families paying full-price tuition + creative fundraising + friendly strangers on the internet who think this is a project worth supporting. Every time a family pays full price, they have provided a small grant that keeps all of these programs running. Every time you click "donate," you have made a small grant for a kid who otherwise wouldn't be able to come.
We are deeply indebted to all of the families in our programs for supporting us financially and helping to make these options possible! And we are grateful to you for helping us make these programs a reality! If you think that education should be not just affordable but AWESOME, click donate and support a free slot today!
Spread the word!
If you're already paying a bunch of money to send your kid to camp, we don't expect you to pitch in extra to support a second slot. Give what you can and put your social networks to use in helping us spread the word! For real, please share and ask your friends to give. Word of mouth is incredibly powerful, especially from people who have already sent their kids to this program.
Help us meet our goal!
If Parts and Crafts has made a difference for your kid, help us pay it forward! If you're a P&C alumni, a wealthy aunt or uncle, a friend in the tech industry, or just a friendly stranger on the internet, take a moment and donate $5, $10, $50 towards our goal! It costs $165 per kid per week to run this program. Every little bit helps, and any extra we bring in will go towards sliding scale.
Donate today!
We would LOVE to be able to run this program with no limitations whatsoever, but we need your help to make it happen! To find out more about what we do or reserve a spot for camp, visit our website, www.partsandcrafts.org!
