Lightyear Foundation breaks down barriers to disabled children accessing STEM through 'sensory science' creative workshops, engaging virtual labs, highlighting disabled scientist role models and workplace inspiration trips.

Our programmes are unique in working with a wide range of disabled children to help them reach their full potential, filling a gap in service delivery and education that is offered by no other organisation.

For some, our work is sensory exploration packed with fun which builds social skills and teaches essential life skills such as choice making or dealing with unexpected outcomes. For others, it’s giving confidence, skills and direction to help them pursue a career in science. 

The need for our work

Recent years have seen some headway in tackling science’s inclusivity and diversity issues but it’s still work in progress. One significant subsection of society – that makes up 20% of working-age adults – remains largely overlooked, and that’s disabled people.

The good news is that there’s a growing realisation that the same kind of workforce tends to come up with narrow-focused solutions. To overcome the big global challenges, our scientists and engineers of the future need to come from all walks of life.

78% of the autistic community and 95% of people with a learning disability are unemployed, yet many ‘disabilities’ are in fact advantageous. For example, an autistic coder may excel at attention to detail and find comfort in repetition, or a visually impaired scientist could detect tactile details that someone else might miss. 

The ‘Jobs of the Future’ study revealed that science, research, engineering and technology jobs will grow at double the rate of other occupations, creating 142,000 extra jobs by 2023. With a severe lack of employment opportunities for disabled people and still currently under-represented in the STEM workforce, we need to mobilise this untapped pool of talent.

Lightyear Foundation projects 

Our unique 6-part programme mobilises this pool of talent and the project streams work together to excite, inspire and enable disabled children (such as those who have autism, visual impairment, cancer or cerebral palsy) to access STEM:

1.     Active Learning Workshops – fusing science with dance

2.    Sensory Science – participatory hands-on 'wow' experiences 

3.     Virtual Lab – an online exploratory

4.     Role Models – showcasing disabled scientists across the sector

5.     Work Inspiration Trips – accessible group visits 

6.     SEN in STEM – sector-wide network breaking down barriers 

To help amplify its impact, Lightyear created a SEN in STEM network (Special Educational Needs in STEM), a widespread community of people committed to making STEM accessible. Building on its expertise it creates opportunities to share, learn and showcase across the 220 member organisations who collectively represent the UK’s science community. 

£5,000 fundraising target

Lightyear Foundation is a small charity with a HUGE impact! We are a tiny team of  part-time professionals, the equivalent of just 1 person full-time.

Raising £5,000 will help cover the essential core costs of our charity (often harder to fundraise for but vital to run our charity), ensure good governance and develop our project streams, enabling us to reach more disabled children than ever before.

Funds raised will recruit, train and support new STEM Leads to deliver our programmes, set up additional regular classes, launch workshops in places in the UK we haven't worked in before and widely showcase our techniques, up-skilling many others in inclusive practice.

Last year we reached 5,000 children and, with your help, we hope to dramatically increase this by 2023.