S.T.E.M.

Listen, before you say anything I want you to know that I know that this is late—lol. Whether you believe me or not, I wrote this the day after I saw the film and just realized it was never posted 🤦🏿‍♂️. That said, I still mean every word written below. Enjoy!

This past weekend the much anticipated sequel to arguably one of the best super hero movies of our time, Black Panther, hit the silver screen titled Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. It was exciting, inspiring and honorable—no spoilers from me. If you didn’t see it this weekend, please pick a day this week, make it a family night, go see this movie!

One of the themes in this film were beautifully highlighted by the imagery of two brilliant young black women Leticia Wright (Shuri) and Dominique Thorne (RiRi Williams) who used their intelligence, innovation and creativity as their power. I watched as my daughter’s eyes lite up as they saw images of women that looked like them boldly play the part of hero with tools that they possessed.

While I was filled with pride and excitement, I was also overwhelmed by my purpose to ensure that our children have access to the educational discipline of solving problems through technology. During the film I couldn’t help but ponder the fact that this piece of art did not imitate life as films often do. Which is the reason I choose to use it to inspire life.

Code.org stated one of the most unbelievable statistics to me. Did you know that 49% of the K-12 schools in the United States of America do not have computer science classes at all—like AT ALL!!!! I’m sure you don’t have to imagine that black and brown youth are less likely to attend the schools that do. I founded The C3 Initiative to give our kids a shot at finding their inner Shuri or RiRi. However, the systems, resources and access to #EDTech in this Country are funneled away from many of them. So much so that our Country has fallen behind so many others. “We will not have it…I said we will not have it Oh!”. The C3 Initiative has set its sight on the BIGGEST mission we have ever been on. We are going to close that gap for good. We will definitely need your help. Visit The C3 Initiative and make a donation to help us solve this unbelievable problem.

I said it before but it is worth saying again. It is true, art does often imitate life, however, art can inspire life as well.

Wakanda Forever!! 🙅🏿‍♂️