CASE
CASE (Community Ambassadors in Science Exploration) is a 3-year collaborative project between the PISEC partnership of four local science museums and eight local community-based organizations. These community organizations serve families from African-American, Latino, Asian, and other communities that are traditionally under-represented in museum audiences.
Teens and adults recruited from the community organizations are trained by the museums to become “community ambassadors”, peer presenters for interactive science workshops. These ambassadors then present workshops within their communities, allowing families to experience hands-on science discovery in their own neighborhoods and in their own languages. Special programs for CASE families are also offered at each of the museum sites.
The goals of the CASE project are to:
- Increase science interest, understanding, and engagement by involving underserved families in hands-on science experience
- Make science accessible to a diverse audience by bringing science activities into community settings
- Build community capacity and provide training and experience in informal science education to peer presenters who have appropriate language and cultural skills
- Increase awareness of careers in science, technology, math, and engineering
- Promote the use of science museums and their educational programs by communities that are underrepresented in current museum audiences
- Lay the groundwork for a more diverse future visitor, employee, and volunteer base for science museums
- Explore and disseminate to the museum and informal science education communities, best practices in community outreach
For more information, please call 215-405-1555.
More about PISEC
The Philadelphia-Camden Informal Science Education Collaborative (PISEC) is a partnership of four major science museums: the Academy of Natural Sciences, the Franklin Institute Science Museum, the New Jersey Academy of Aquatic Sciences, and the Philadelphia Zoo. PISEC was launched in 1992 to conduct research and outreach programs in support of family science learning. CASE, begun in 2005, is the fourth initiative conduced by PISEC.
