Photo by Neidy Gutierrez / SOC Images.
As a child, your dreams can feel infinite.
But in reality, scarce resources and limited opportunities in communities can make infinity feel hard to reach. Yvonne Thevenot wants to change that; one community at a time, starting with Bergen-Lafayette in Jersey City.
Thevenot is the founder and executive director of STEM Kids NYC, a nonprofit that aims to welcome and immerse pre-k to high school students into the world of science, engineering, computer science, robotics and other creative technologies. This is through events, virtual learning and affordable summer and afterschool programs.
In August, STEM Kids celebrated their 10th anniversary and first-ever physical location in Jersey City.
“I’m smiling because one of our students who is here [volunteering], he’s gonna be starting high school this fall here in Jersey City,” Thevenot told Slice of Culture. “He started with us when he was four, so I’m very, very proud that he’s here. It brings me back memories.”
When the student was four years old, his parents approached Thevenot because the child wanted to work with cardboard, which they would always save up on, but they didn’t know what to do with it. “That’s why we want him to come to your program,” they told her.
“I sat with him to show them things that they could do. They already had the products, they just didn’t know how to help him get engaged with it… So I showed them… I call it kitchen science,” Thevenot explained.
“You get these ingredients, baking soda and all these vinegar and wow, you have a volcano… I always volunteer my time to work with students, even teachers, to be able to kind of insert more STEM into their environments.”
The student went on to be captain of his middle school robotics team and led them to a state championship last year. Now he’s a freshman in high school.
When he has time, you might find him at STEM Kids New Jersey’s space at 704 Grand Street near The Hill in Jersey City, teaching young kids the same things he learned early on.
‘Dream It, Code It, Make It’
Stepping inside their Jersey City location, you’re immediately dropped into the kids’ creative and innovative world; and theirs was decorated with microscopes, engineering projects, robotics prototypes and plenty of self-expressive drawings taped to the walls.
On an August morning during their summer camp, three students were tapping into discovery, as Thevenot explained it. They mixed vinegar and baking soda into a ziploc bag until, “Look! It’s bubbling!” one student exclaimed, excitingly, to show what our human bodies do with carbon dioxide as we breathe in and out.
“As opposed to using worksheets and lectures, we do a lot of things that are hands on so that at the moment that things happen—meaning a discovery around science or the moment that they build that rollercoaster and then they see the marble going descending down the ramp—that’s when we can teach certain concepts like kinetic energy [and] potential energy. And that way it’s locked into their brain,” Thevenot added.
“[It’s about] understanding from an educational standpoint where they are and then we extend their knowledge from there.”
And this model follows the footsteps of Thevenot’s father.
In first grade, her teacher asked her class what they wanted to be when they grew up. The Ohio native proudly stood up and said, “I want to be a doctor!” Her father—a programmer at IBM—then bought Thevenot her first microscope and different organ models. By age 11, he introduced her to computer science and she learned her first computer programming language.
“Science started at home, and then that just continued on in my years,” Thevenot smiled.
More BIPOC Representation In STEM = More Discoveries & Breakthroughs
She went on to major in Computer Science at the University of Dayton before winning a Minority Scholar computer programming internship with the Mead Corporation. She continued by earning a master’s in teaching from the University of Southern California. From there, she ventured to Silicon Valley where she oversaw a $2 billion business unit for a “prominent major financial institution.”
But it was there that she noticed the disparities first-hand.
“When I worked in the Silicon Valley, I saw all too clearly the evident absence of people of color in the tech industry. I also saw more people of color as early adopters to the software, apps, and programs produced by mostly White tech developers,” she wrote in a letter.
White workers made up 62.9% of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) workers, followed by 14.8% Hispanic, 8.2% Black or African American, 9.5% Asian and 0.3% American Indian or Alaska Native, according to a 2021 report by the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics.
Eventually, she began to notice the disparities right in her own neighborhood.
She moved from Ohio to Harlem, New York. In New York, she would see people on the corner and saw her kids—some of whom came from nearby shelters—get recruited for gangs.
“Students may not know that they have the brilliance to be able to be a scientist,” Thevenot said.
“And in the neighborhood in Harlem where I was, that was evident that students had a certain lens about who they could be. And I wanted to counter that or at least show them that they too could also have other aspirations.”
STEM Kids NYC started as an afterschool program in Harlem. But that goal in mind plus a sizable grant is what brought them to Jersey City’s Bergen-Lafayette, a neighborhood where Thevenot said she wants to see people invest in and build up “not build out or move out.” She added that the location allows STEM Kids to “cater to multiple families of diverse populations” like those near Jersey City’s Hill, West Side and Downtown.
“If you give students that grounding and foundation of knowledge, then [it] turns to practical application, they too can be mathematicians no matter what neighborhood they came from.
– Thevenot
I’m in a sense [through STEM Kids NYC], addressing the issue of that inequality by making sure that we have donations and I’m a good steward of money to buy the things that I know the students will need, so that when they go out in the world, they won’t be feeling like they’re an imposter. They will have touched those same robots as the rich kid did. So that’s what I wanna give to them.”
And by leveling the playing field through opportunity, Thevenot added that there would be more breakthroughs in the health industry and scientific discoveries that are “plagued in BIPOC communities” like high blood pressure, which is extremely predominant in 56% of Black adults.
Thevenot was “plagued” with a lung disease for years, which her pulmonologist told her is typically found in “middle class white women.” The medicine she was prescribed didn’t help her; she had a lung transplant in 2023.
“If we had more people that had more diverse thoughts coming in with their lived experiences into the science lab, there would be more scientists [and] scientific discovery that would be able to support,” she added.
The Dream For STEM Kids
Families can enter the world of STEM Kids by visiting stemkidsnyc.org and navigating through their menu which shows their weekend programs, afterschool programs and more, including their upcoming fall programming.
They often have promotions going on and offer coupons to families. For payment, they can also do it on a sliding scale “so we don’t turn anybody away.”
As for Thevenot’s dream, she wants STEM Kids New Jersey to be incorporated throughout Jersey City’s schools.
“The dream is to be inside schools similar to how we are in New York City, where we have relationships with schools and we are part of their afterschool program. We want to do the same thing here in Jersey City. So I’m wanting to make friends with the Board of Education so that we can be a part of that. Until that happens, we will have our space open for parents who want to come and bring their child on the weekends.”
