Orange County high school students help teach disadvantaged youth through nonprofit
TUSTIN, Calif. (KABC) -- Some Orange County high school students are taking on a huge responsibility. While studying in school they are also making it their mission to help teach others.
They're providing education to children who are homeless or live in disadvantaged communities. They're doing this through their nonprofit called Kreative Kiddos.
Andre Lombardi is its founder.
"Back in the summer or actually spring of 2020 we started Kreative Kiddos, which is a nonprofit geared at providing fun-filled, interactive STEM workshops, sometimes intertwining both STEM and art," Lombardi said. "So therefore it's more of a STEAM workshop."
They teach science, technology, engineering, arts and math in the Orange County community.
"Not every school is the same. Not every school receives the same funding," said Brandon Pham, the chief operations officer of Kreative Kiddos. "Not every teacher teaches the same and obviously not every student learns the same. We do our best to try to level that playing field."
They started during COVID and remained committed to teaching even if wasn't in person.
"Ignite is a monthly series where we would release videos, two to three different experiments for these kids to learn and for each of these experiments we would explain the principles of the science behind it, as well as how they can perform the experiment on their own," said Timothy Tan, the chief technology officer of Kreative Kiddos.
Now they do in-person workshops and challenges like experiments.
"We want our experiments to be both repeatable and affordable for students, especially because we are dealing with socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds," said Nikka Shahrokni, the chief financial officer of the nonprofit.
The founders of the nonprofit will be going off to college in the next few months, but they'll be passing the torch to underclassman at their high schools who will keep Kreative Kiddos going and continue work in the community.
