The David and Lucille Packard Foundation is now featuring the Greenfield CSW as a grantee success story. Here is their glowing depiction of the process of transforming the old City Hall in Greenfield, CA, into a thriving and vibrant community resource for hands-on science education:

How do you turn an old City Hall building into a lively and energetic science workshop for kids and families?

“Basically, you need two things, tables and electrical outlets,” said José Sanchez, the Coordinator of Greenfield Community Science Workshop (Greenfield CSW).

With these two necessities, José and his team got to work in 2011 transforming the previous Greenfield City Hall building into a Community Science Workshop.

On March 13th, 2013, the Excelsior Community Science Workshop held a Grand Opening in their new space at 35 San Juan Ave. in San Francisco. The newest site in the CSW Network has taken over the old auditorium of the Ocean Avenue Presbyterian Church, at the corner of Ocean and Mission St. in the Excelsior district. Families and kids from the neighborhood turned out in force for the opening night party, where they had a chance to explore the many hands-on exhibits built by staff members. Participants also got to build projects at several hands-on making stations, where staff explained how to make glovaphones, penny helicopters, and flying toys for the wind tunnel.

On February 18th, 2013, staff members from seven Community Science Workshop sites and affiliate sites in California got together for a training hosted by the CSW Network at the Watsonville Environmental Science Workshop. Designed to highlight the rich store of expertise and teaching skills embodied in CSW staff members, the training was planned around small table-based discussions that presented findings back to the larger group.

The first time 10-year-old Sol McKinney set foot inside the Mission Science Workshop, he wired together two six-volt batteries to make a heater and was instantly hooked on science. Now a graduate of U.C. Davis with a degree in ecology, McKinney returned to the organization as a teacher and manages the workshop’s newest branch in the Excelsior District.

Cornell University’s Xraise outreach program, based at the Cornell Laboratory for Accelerator-based Sciences and Education, is now using curricula developed at Community Science Workshops in several of their ongoing programs. “There has been such an explosion of interest”

On July 2nd, 2012, the CSW Network held an all-staff training day at Mission Science Workshop (MSW) in the former auto shop at Mission High School in San Francisco. Staff members and teachers from all five Community Science Workshops in California came together to learn about other CSW programs, and to take new science projects and activities back to their individual locations.

Kids growing up in the Bay Area have access to more than a dozen science museums and zoos but in much of the state, those opportunities don’t exist. With science programs getting trimmed in schools, that leaves many kids with little access to hands-on science. One Bay Area man wants to change that.

The week of March 12th, 2012, was Whale Week at John Muir Elementary in San Francisco.  The Mission Science Workshop worked closely with teachers at the school to design a week-long curriculum built around using the complete skeleton of the [...]

WATSONVILLE – Hammers pound. Drills buzz. Children chatter.

It’s a typical day at the city’s Environmental Science Workshop at Marinovich Park. In one corner a mother helps her daughter build a new home for the family cat. Two groups of middle school students are designing hovercrafts on nearby tables. A small girl climbs up on a stool to reach into a cage and pet a guinea pig.

For 15 years, Watsonville’s Environmental Science Workshop has provided a place for students who love hands-on science, but find it missing from their everyday curriculum.

Now, a $73,000 grant from the Community Science Workshop [Network] will help the workshop further that mission.

The grant, which came from the Moore Foundation and the Bechtel Foundation, was meant to help the Watsonville Community Science Workshop program expand its offerings, workshop coordinator Curt Gabrielson said.