13 YEARS preparing MINORITIZED GIRLS IN STEM
Our History
The GEMS Camp is a 501(c)3 founded by STEM educator Saki Milton to close the gender and racial gap in STEM studies and careers. Milton’s passion for mathematics, her love for serving at-risk youth, and witnessing and experiencing the disparity in STEM education quality in underserved and affluent schools led her to create a STEM camp for 7th-9th grade minority girls. Founded in 2010, The GEMS Camp is one of the few girl-centric organizations founded and led by a Black female STEM educator.
Since its inception in 2010, The GEMS Camp has evolved from a six-week Saturday camp serving 30 girls into four flagship week-long summer programs serving 500 girls in the North Texas region. The GEMS Camp was the recipient of the Million Women Mentors-TX Educational Organization Award by the Texas Girls Collaborative Project in December 2020.
Inaugural Class of The GEMS Camp, 2010
Our Goals
We aim to do four things well to move girls through the STEM pipeline.
Our Purpose
We want to increase the percentage of minority women earning bachelor’s degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), in order to improve gender, racial, and socioeconomic diversity, equity, and inclusion in the U.S. STEM workforce.
We focus on the challenges of “summer learning loss” and most notably now, “pandemic learning loss,” for many girls of color, specifically Black and Latina middle school girls from economically disadvantaged communities. Why summer? Summertime is a time of great potential to reverse these losses by engaging girls in exciting ways that look and feel very different from learning during the school year.
