Our Work Related to Science & Environment

SciGirls Outreach is a national educational television program of DragonflyTV, produced by Minnesota Public Television and supported by a generous grant from the National Science Foundation’s Program for Gender Equity. Since 2006, SciGirls Outreach has employed and disseminated the latest research and best practices around engaging girls in science, and has empowered youth organizations, science museums, educators and parents to deliver research-based hands-on STEM encouragement programs to girls in their communities.

To meet the dramatic changes in U.S. demographics and the need for more woman scientists and engineers, the project has expanded programming into Latino communities nationwide via the SciGirls en Espanol initiative working in collaboration with the Self Reliance Foundation.  SciGirls en Espanol provides Spanish-language print and video resources, leader training, and grants to nine existing Latina-serving organizations to help encourage greater engagement in STEM.

The SciGirls project encompasses an upcoming PBS TV show, a website, and a resource provider for educators, club leaders and mentors who are working with girls doing science. SciGirls outreach energizes club meetings, science camps, classes, and other events tailored for girls with DragonflyTV videos that feature girls doing authentic inquiry, along with exciting science activities based on these videos. SRF staffer Alicia Santiago helped select segments that would resonate with young Latinas, oversaw translations for video and print and helped provide insight on how SciGirls content could best serve the Latina community.  The production staff at KLCS TV (a noncommercial educational television station licensed to the Los Angeles Unified School District and a member PBS station) was instrumental in helping repackage individual SciGirls video, collaborating to develop a format that would best serve middle school Latinas and their families.

For more information, or to request review copies of SciGirl en Español materials, send an email to scigirls@tpt.org or visit the SciGirls website.

SRF’s initiative directed at the Hispanic community “El Genoma Human a su Alcance” or “The Human Genome Is Within Your Reach” was an educational project funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and designed to inform Spanish-speaking adults about the scientific, ethical, legal and social issues related to the human genome.  The project included public information messages in Spanish, disseminated through both print media and radio, and ended in 2008.

The radio programs developed by SRF provided interesting information about genetics, with the goal of peaking the curiosity of listeners to learn more about the human genome.  Some programs also featured interviews with Hispanic researchers discussing the discoveries of the human genome project.

A complementary website was also developed to make information about the human genome more interesting and accessible to the general Spanish-speaking public.   Issues related to genetics and bioethics were emphasized, like the importance of creating a record of family health history. Visit the website at www.nuestrogenoma.org

Click here to listen to a Genoma Humana radio spot

To help inform and further empower the Latino population in the United States, SRF’s Acceso Hispano initiative recently launched an interactive, multi-dimensional online presence with several innovative features.

The main platform, housed at the website www.accesohispano.org includes four different interfaces directed at four different target audiences:

• English (designed to inform stakeholders about issues facing the Latino community)
• Spanish (designed to reach Spanish-language dominant Hispanics with relevant articles about issues that affect them, in addition to links to helpful websites or organizations)
• Service Providers (developed to help community-based service providers across the country better serve the Latino community by providing tailored information and resources)
• Promotores (to help Acceso Hispano’s network of community-based promoters better serve the community)

The different sections of the Acceso Hispano website include features to help facilitate communication with the public including newsletters; discussion forums; calls for articles from the public; SMS texting capacity; events calendars; comments; email forms; visual search features and more.

The website is designed to complement Acceso Hispano’s toll-free bilingual telephone hotline which provides free information and referrals to callers around the country related to job training, ESL classes, scholarship opportunities, health care options, voter registration sites, domestic violence shelters, and a vast array of other services requested by the Spanish-speaking Hispanic community.  To ensure that the community has access to the culturally-sensitive community based services that they need at any time of day, Acceso Hispano is developing a searchable web-based database of providers.  Service providers can easily update their information online, search the database to help make referrals for their clients, and the general public can conduct instantaneous searches for the specialized services available in their own communities.

Click here to download a brochure about Acceso Hispano.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — From March 26 to 29, 2009, the Self Reliance Foundation hosted the conference: “Expanding Informal Science Education to Latinos” in Albuquerque, New Mexico at the Hotel Albuquerque in Old Town.

The conference brought over 100 representatives from informal science institutions and science research organizations together with Hispanic organizations, media, and educational projects to review current Informal Science Education (ISE) resources, identify needs and gaps, learn about best practices in designing culturally effective programs and resources, and develop new strategies and resources to enrich the informal science learning environment for Latinos. The conference built on existing project partnerships Self Reliance Foundation has developed through its NSF-funded Celebra la Ciencia and Conciencia/Hispanic Science Newswire projects, and sought to further expand initiatives to involve new organizations.

“We know from research that informal science education – science outside the classroom – provides powerful formative experiences that have inspired many to become scientists”, explains Bob Russell, PhD, project director of Celebra la Ciencia. “In many ways, our communities are ’science rich’ – there are thousands of science museums, zoos, community and youth organizations, and science programs across the country. Media – television, radio, and the Internet – pervade our culture in Spanish and English. Our task at this meeting was to harness these resources more effectively.”

“Our challenge was to share what we have and work together to create new opportunities for Latinos to get involved in science”, concludes Russell.

The Conference hosted three keynote sessions designed to help science educators, science researchers, and others in the Hispanic Informal Science marketplace address how to develop new strategies and resources to enrich the informal science learning environment for Latinos.  Attendees had the opportunity to participate in a variety of workshops, including sessions led by Marisol Gamboa, Senior Software Engineer for Harris IT Consulting, Inc; Dr. Inés Cifuentes, a volcanologist and science educator; Fred Mondragón, New Mexico’s Cabinet Secretary of Economic Development; that addressed different topics and offered insights as to better engage Hispanic adults and families in the sciences.

Well-known science institutions and museums such as the New Mexico Museum of Natural History, National Science Foundation (NSF), San Diego Natural History Museum, National Children’s Museum, Institute for Learning Innovation, Space Science Institute, Exploratory Science Museum – UNICAMP, Illinois Institute of Technology, Boys and Girls Club, Latino Organizations such as the Society for the Advancement of Native Americans and Chicanos in Science, the ASPIRA Association, and the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers among many others participated in the conference’s educational sessions.

According to Roberto Salazar, President of SRF, the conference was a tremendous success. “We had representatives from government, museums, the non-profit sector, the media, and academia all represented at the conference, sharing their expertise. It was clear to us all that the more we work together, the better – and the more effective – our work becomes.”

The conference was made possible thanks to the generous support of the National Science Foundation.

View the conference program:  Expanding Informal Science Education for Latinos– Conference Program

ConCienciaNews.com is a project designed by SRF, developed and implemented in collaboration with Hispanic Communications Network (HCN), and financed by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

ConCiencia News is the first Spanish-language news service in the United States focused exclusively on health, science and environmental news.  SRF distributes news via ConCiencia free of cost to a diverse array of Hispanic media including 100+ newspapers and magazines, top Hispanic web portals, and almost 150 Spanish-language radio stations.  Each news story features original content developed by SRF journalists, and Hispanic reasearchers are often features to serve as role models for the public.

Why ConCiencia News Service?

The reduction of staff and consolidation of the media has left few resources for local Spanish-language media to offer scientific information to their Latino audiences.  Current studies reveal that Latinos score well below average in math and science in public schools, and are poorly represented in professions related to science and engineering.  To help address these challenges, SRF provides Hispanic media with a continuous source of high-quality scientific news adapted to the needs and interests of the Hispanic community.  This service increases the capacity of Spanish-language news agencies to offer better scientific content.

The market for Spanish-language news media in the United States is broad and growing.  Currently there are more than 1,500 Spanish-language newspapers printed in the U.S. with a circulation of more than 42 million people, and 1,000 Spanish-language radio stations on the air around the country reaching millions of listeners each day.  In addition the Hispanic online presence is growing steadily.

ConCiencia News is supported by an Advisory Committee comprised of experts in the science field and members of the National Association for Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ).

Click here to download a brochure about the ConCiencia News service.