Watching her older brother lead a math club from the front porch of her family’s quaint coastal home in the Dominican Republic helped foster Rosa Aristy’s love for STEM education as a child.

Like her brother, Aristy grew up surrounded by family members who taught her the value of investing in others — a commitment she now makes to not only the students in her kids’ homeschool co-op but also their parents.

“That front porch they would sit at was the very first math club I was exposed to,” Aristy told The 74. “Seeing them laugh because they were having so much fun learning together became something I wanted to instill in others.”

Aristy’s upbringing served as the inspiration for Bridges to Science, a Houston-based nonprofit that addresses diversity gaps in STEM education through math, robotics and coding programs for homeschool students.

Through the support of the VELA Education Fund, Bridges to Science has expanded its mission to train homeschool parents on how to teach their children math.

Today, Bridges to Science serves more than 50 homeschool families across Texas with the help of local universities, organizations and volunteers.

“It’s a very near and dear vision of mine…and the intent is to support our amazing students who have so much potential but don’t have access,” Aristy said.

The 74: How would you say your upbringing and being a homeschool mother influenced the creation of Bridges to Science?

When we first moved to Texas, I noticed the school system was really focused on annual testing. It was beginning to rob my children of the joy of learning and I didn’t want that to happen. That was the one thing my parents in particular instilled in me and I want my kids to be lifelong learners.

One day the moms at my children’s homeschool co-op asked the students to vote on what courses they wanted to learn. They pretty much said they wanted more coding, robotics and STEM classes. The moms and I just stared at each other wondering who would have the courage to teach these classes. No one seemed committed to doing this and I didn’t want to let our students down. I had done some programming before, not the kind they wanted to learn, but I thought that I could learn something child-friendly and get up to speed.

But before I did that, I was aware that homeschoolers in my community use a curriculum and approach to math that’s memory-based and very common in school systems. I knew that it wasn’t giving the kids the math foundation they needed to go into the sciences. So I said, let me first start off with a math club like my brother’s growing up and once the foundation is set we can do coding next. That’s how Bridges to Science first started out.

Read the full article about diversity gaps in STEM education by Joshua Bay at The 74.