Birmingham Public Library receives 2021 Infy Maker Award + grant for new youth program

Birmingham Public Library (BPL) was chosen as one of 10 national organizations to receive the 2021 Infy Maker Award. The 2021 Infymaker Awards announced BPL’s win during the virtual ceremony and they are the only winner from Alabama. 

Brillance in BPL

InfyMaker Award is a $10,000 grant funded by Infosys Foundation USA. The grant provides new STEM programming for 3rd through 12th grade students.

How is the BPL going to spend this prestigious award? BPL intends to create maker kits for distribution at its after school programs. 

The kits will be used for maker activities including new subjects such as:

• Electrical engineering
• Design-based engineering

Here’s a video discussing BPL’s new STEM program: 

STEMulating Students’ Mind

BPL has hosted previous STEM programs that included:

• robotics
• soldering
• coding

Within one year, the Teen Engineering program served over 2,000 students in the Greater Birmingham area with at least 132 programs. Now, they plan to include 3rd through 5th graders. 

One of the program’s students, Katelynn Miller, has won two ANSI wit awards and chose  computer science as a career option. She actively helps lead coding programs at BPL.

“I’m thankful to the Birmingham Public Library for providing these opportunities with the Infy Maker award. We hope to provide more of the programs that we have in place, while also adding opportunities for design and engineering. We plan to create an internship program with various colleges in the state, providing traveling programs through bookmobile and in-depth lessons for online software for batching system. Thank you, Infy Maker for providing an opportunity to expand our program.”

Katelynn Miller, High School STEM Mentor from the video

Here’s the video announcing the other winners of this wonderful award and grant.

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