What we saw during Lights On 2022: Part 2

Welcome to part two of "What we saw during Lights On 2022." As we head into the new year, we wanted to share some of the first-hand accounts from our staff members who were able to visit afterschool programs during this year's Lights On. You can read part one on our blog. Mark your calendars for next year -- Lights On Afterschool will be Thursday, October 26, 2023!

From Chris Neitzey:

Janelle and I attended the watch party event at NASA Goddard. The event was held at the Visitor Center, which had a great space for the activities and a theatre for the students to watch a downlink from the ISS. The students from the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Washington and students from a local middle school were in attendance, as well as families from NASA. There were six different activity tables set up in the visitor center that included different activities that helped students understand what NASA engineers do, like the assembly of space telescopes, utilizing lasers to measure distances, drawing with CAD, and using robots to move payloads. The kids seemed to have a blast with all the activities. The event concluded a Q+A with some of the women engineers that work at NASA, with a ton of interaction from the students. We were able to sneak in a Lightbulb Challenge photo at the end as well.   

From Ursula Helminski:

I attended a virtual Lights On event in partnership with NASA. Youth Amanda Gutierrez, who first debuted as an Afterschool Youth Ambassador our 2021 town hall and served in the first Million Girls Moonshot Flight Crew class, was a total pro as a co-moderator of the NASA virtual event, and the video of Jessica Watkins answering questions from space was very cool. All of the women on the live panel conversation were incredibly inspiring and gave great advice to young listeners about following their passions and sticking with it.

The Think Together virtual event was equally inspiring, as they highlighted the importance of afterschool for all, partnerships, use of COVID funds, and higher wages for provider staff. At least eight different youth spoke about the impact of afterschool in their lives.

Secretary Cardona followed with a spot-on message about the power of afterschool programs, and spoke to afterschool programs saying, “You shine a light every time you help a student.” He called for use American Rescue Plan (ARP) funds and partnerships, and highlighted the importance of programs in supporting youth today emerging from the impact of the pandemic. He wove the story of how Think Together was founded into his remarks.

“This our moment to act with the same boldness and intentionality around collaboration that we saw from the mothers of Costa Mesa in 1994 [when Think Together was founded] … so today, let’s celebrate everything you’ve achieved for our young people. But let’s also recognize the unprecedented opportunity to take that same spirit of reimagination to new heights.”

Think Together wrapped it up with a direct call to support the lawmakers who are championing afterschool, and asked for universal afterschool, sustained funding, wage increases.

From Jillian Luchner:

I went to Life Pieces to Masterpieces, where brilliant students from a number of different schools all taught me about space, Mars, and physics, while a NASA scientist taught us all to make helicopters. Students will try them out in wind tunnels at the NASA HQ event. Nice dosage of beautiful art, as well. And of course there were amazing, loving, and patient educators. Who couldn’t love Lights On?