I’m sure you know that October is Black History Month in the UK and Ireland, and it would be easy for us to tell you how much we recognise and celebrate the many brilliant achievements and contributions that black scientists around the world have made that enrich our lives – which we of course do. From medicine to filmmaking to space exploration to cancer research and a million other applications. People of colour are a huge part of our sciency tapestry and their discoveries have made all of our lives better. We invite you to celebrate all of their achievements with us by taking the time to read an article or two from a few that we’ve sought out, starting with this very cool clip:
But here’s the thing.
We’re seeing fewer black scientists which makes me sad and worried, so I don’t just want to use this month to celebrate past achievements. I want to use it as a springboard to show off people from every corner of our sciency world so that they’re in the spotlight all the time. So that every Curiositeer can see themselves as someone who has the power to make life-changing discoveries.
I want all young people to be able to see themselves as scientists. This philosophy has been at the heart of Curiosity Box since we launched this company because I believe we can help future generations smash stereotypes – particularly the ones about ethnicity and privilege – and dream of a career that they might not have seen themselves in before. So our new ‘See it, Be it’ series will be all about celebrating inspiring people from the science world who don’t necessarily match the typical idea of a scientist.
We’re starting with one of our own champions – coding queen Avye!
Avye is a huge rising star in the STEM world and has blown us away with her achievements to date. She’s barely a teenager but has already set up computer coding courses for girls, helped raise funds for resources to help girls continue their coding education at home and designed her own robot! She’s a future STEM leader and we can’t wait to see what she does next! Check out what she’s done so far!
Keep your eyes peeled next week for our next science star. For now, here are those articles we promised you????
https://www.blackhistorymonth.org.uk/section/science-and-medicine/
https://www.sciencebuddies.org/blog/black-history-month-scientists
https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/black-inventors-and-pioneers-of-science
https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/diversity-in-science/black-history-month-2020/
http://sciencenetlinks.com/tools/spotlight-african-american/