Make it

It started in 2022 with the BroomBots, a robotics team of nine middle school and early high school students who wanted to build robots together. On that team were three girls and six boys, including two students with autism, two students with ADHD, two Ukrainian refugees who had just arrived in Broomfield a few months before, and two students for whom English is their second language. That’s not a typical robotics team, but this group of kids needed a community and they had one thing in common - a love for building things. For the seven adults who agreed to mentor the team, it became clear from day one that we would be doing more than just building robots. We would be building community, resiliency, confidence, comradery, basic science and math skills, communication skills, wellness skills, English language skills, and so much more. As word got around about what we were doing, we heard the same thing over and over. “That program would be perfect for my son/daughter. Do you have anything for younger kids?” So six months after we started our little robotics team, we got to work founding Broomfield STEM so we could start answering that question with a “yes!”