Max Miller is a teen who loves cool science things, like coding, 3-D printing, and robots. He loves them so much that he thinks every kid should get a chance to learn about these things; when he realized that 10,000 kids are diagnosed with cancer each year, he was worried that those kids would spend so much time in hospitals and doctors offices recovering that they would miss out learning incredible things at school, like science, art, and math. The thought of this was unacceptable to Max, and he decided to do something to fix it.
Max has called himself a tech geek for a long time, but when he decided to work as a camp counselor at Sunrise Day Camp, a summer camp for kids with cancer, he thought he was getting out of his tech geek world and into something different. What Max didn’t know is that those two worlds were about to collide. It started when one of the campers told Max he wished he could learn to code, something Max himself is so good at and he knows over a dozen coding languages.
With that request, Max set out to create a computer science program at Sunrise, because in his mind, every child should get the chance to flex their science and nerd muscles, and to date, he has already raised over 300,000. He wants to use this money to build a S.T.E.A.M. Shack, which stands for science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics.
In a recent interview, Max said of the shack, “[With] air conditioning, the S.T.E.A.M. Shack is literally and figuratively the ‘coolest’ place at camp. Other than the A/C, the kids share my enthusiasm for 3-D printing. Although most people have heard about 3-D printing, very few have actually experienced it firsthand. The look of awe on a camper’s face when they watch something they have designed appear before their eyes is priceless.”
Max has been the driving force behind this project in every single way. He is not only the one who came up with the idea, he personally presented it to the camp director and senior staff, and once getting the go-ahead, he met with the board of the Laura Rosenberg Foundation, who ended up giving the initial gift of 150,000 dollars to get the project started.
Since that time he has not slowed down, fundraising at places such as Makerbot, Stony Brook University, and the Cradle of Aviation Museum. In the process, he has gone from someone who sees himself as a behind the scenes person to a public speaker of sorts. Of this, he says, “Although I still get nervous, I have become much more comfortable speaking in front of groups of adults.”
Max and Sunrise are not stopping at the S.T.E.A.M. Shack, but plan on taking their show on the road, so to speak. This year they will be going to the pediatric oncology wards at hospitals to bring science the children there. They are building an academic portal at steamshack.org so kids all over can log in and learn as much science as they want, from anywhere in the world, so that something like cancer will not get in the way of them nerding out as much as they want.
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Source: Outer Places
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