Date: November 2023
Amount: $85,320

The Manila Council Amateur Radio Club (MCS-ARC), established in 1923, is the oldest scouting council in the Philippines. Since 2013, the Council introduced amateur radio and STEM programs to promote new technology and aimed to reach schools within the Council. As of 2023, the Manila Council has more than 20,000 scouts and plans to increase their numbers in 2024 by 5%. On average, they travel to two schools a week for their scouting programs, which promote STEM learning via hands-on projects, such as making antennas and learning how to code. They want to extend these learning opportunities to youth in areas of poverty. The community is consistently faced with disasters; consequently, this impacts the ability of the local youth to learn, as school attendance is disrupted in the absence of power, communications, and internet.

This grant will provide funding for a mobile STEM platform, which will offer the ability for the club to provide onsite STEM learning by allowing them to set up internet and give them tools for communication. Additionally, funding will allow for providing internet to the club’s HQ, which will allow them to bring internet to their community via a Starlink connection. Finally, funding will allow the club to teach electronics and radio theory to their community, with the end goal of getting people licensed. As a result, the club will have both clean energy and equipment to educate the impoverished community on STEM-based topics and offer them learning opportunities that they would not have otherwise.

Learn more at https://radioscouting.ph/index.html.