VIRGINIA BEACH, Va — "It's our first-ever inaugural STEAMCON and that means that we've brought together 40 vendors to celebrate Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math," said Program Manager of the Interactive Learning Center, Melany Bishop.
Kathy Magee, the CEO and Co-Founder of Operation Smile told News 3 that, "Operation Smile has been going on for 40 years, so what we've always tried to do is bring students in through this organization through getting them out on trips or getting into the schools and explaining what the world is about."
Families had the opportunity to not only walk on Legos with the Little Bricks Charity Guy, but also sew a Smile Bag, play in the sand, learn about 3D-printing, suturing and watch a rocket launch with the Virginia Spaceport Authority.
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I even had the change to sew the first Smile Bag of the day!
"We also have a focus on STEM and building a STEM pipeline for the Aerospace Industry. STEM related directly to Operation Smile, they have a STEM focus. Their STEM relating to the medical side of things, our STEM relating to the rocket and Aerospace side of things," said CEO and Executive Director of Virginia Spaceport Authority, Ted Mercer.
The Co-Founders want the community to learn how the world of medicine and the power or service helps children affected by cleft conditions.
"Today, there's about 18,000 students involved with Operation Smile around the world. There's 6,000 medical volunteers that have operated on 400,000 children for free all over the world and we're in about 38 countries", said William Magee. He's the CEO and Co-Founder of Operation Smile.
Bishop adds, "This is an opportunity for us to inspire the younger generation to come together to create a more passionate world and to help us reach the goal of helping a million patients in the next decade."
