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Middle school boys graduate DSU's Verizon sponsored STEM camp

Delaware Public Media

An educational program for low-income boys is wrapping up its summer session at Delaware State University.

The Verizon Innovative Learning program has partnered with schools across the country to educate young men since 2012. DSU joined the list of 24 HBCUs and Hispanic institutions offering the program three years ago.

Verizon is paying $300 thousand over the next two years for DSU to enroll 200 under-resourced middle school boys in the summer camp.

Program Co-Director Lilly Crawford says the three-week camp on DSU’s Dover campus exposes kids to potential career pathways in fields like coding, app development and robotics.

“For some of them, it’s eye-opening because they see the possibilities for their future. They’re starting to think high school, college and they’re starting to think what am I going to major in, what am I going to be. So we’re kind of waking that up,” said Crawford.

80 kids graduated from the Delaware program Friday in a ceremony where they showed off their final projects.

Soon-to-be 9th grader Joseph Simmons from the Capital School District’s Central Middle School has taken the program for the past two summers.

“Unlike other programs where it’s just telling you stuff, you get to interact and you get to do things like hands on. You get to create something and you have something to show for it at the end,” said Simmons.

Verizon has invested $200 million in the program nationwide and has reached more than one million kids. DSU has received $700 thousand to run the program in Delaware.