CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa– The New Bohemian Innovation Collaborative (NewBoCo) announced today it has received a $50,000 grant from Telligen Community Initiative (TCI), a private, Iowa-based charitable foundation. These funds will support the addition of health care-focused lessons into NewBoCo’s K-5 CoderDojo program.
NewBoCo’s K-12 Education programming supports Iowans of all ages by providing the training and skills necessary to thrive in an increasingly technical world. One of its most cherished K-12 programs is CoderDojo, a free, biweekly offering of hands-on STEM activities for K-5 students. Due to the pandemic, CoderDojo has been held virtually and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. The pandemic has shown NewBoCo that virtual STEM programming is a vital part of our children’s education. It’s also made it clear that students need more access to education that introduces them to the health care industry, both so they can understand the world they live in and so that they can explore becoming a health care professional in their future.
Grant funding from the TCI will allow NewBoCo to hire a STEM Education Fellow to develop and test health care-focused CoderDojo stations and fund the equipment and materials necessary for such stations.
“Introducing children to STEM education at an early age is crucial to helping inspire them to explore STEM careers across many industries when they grow up,” said Aaron Horn, NewBoCo’s Executive Director. “Support from TCI to expand our CoderDojo program to include a focus on the health care industry will help inspire the next generation of innovative health care workers in our community..”
This support for CoderDojo was one of only 18 grants selected for TCI’s 2020 Iowa and Illinois-based funding cycle, which awarded a total of $700,590 in grants to nonprofit organizations in these states ($359,290 to Iowa and $341,300 to Illinois).
“TCI is pleased to support the work of one of Iowa’s most innovative nonprofits, NewBoCo, and their STEM programming,” said Matt McGarvey, executive director of Telligen Community Initiative. “Making health-focused lessons accessible online to students across the state opens up new opportunities they may not have known about or considered.”
TCI works to support projects in the priority funding areas of health innovation, health care workforce development and access to care for the underserved. Since 2014, TCI has awarded more than $11 million to 269 organizations and projects in Iowa, Illinois, Oklahoma and Colorado.
About NewBoCo
The New Bohemian Innovation Collaborative (NewBoCo) is a 501(c)(3) organization located in the New Bohemia neighborhood of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. NewBoCo’s programming supports entrepreneurship, innovation, and tech education to help Iowans become more resilient and thrive in a changing economy.
About Telligen Community Initiative
Telligen Community Initiative (TCI) is the charitable foundation of Telligen, Inc., a private, nonprofit health care intelligence company. TCI seeks to empower organizations and citizens to improve their individual and overall community health. TCI funding is designed to initiate and support innovative health-related projects designed to improve health, social well-being, and educational attainment. The foundation’s funding focuses on project support in Iowa, Illinois, Colorado and Oklahoma within the areas of health innovation, health for the underserved and health care workforce development. For more information about TCI, please visit www.telligenci.org
