Welcome!
Sisters With A Dream (SWD) is a weekly 4 - 6 hour after-school enrichment program that serves girls of color and their allies in the 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades at the Fletcher Maynard Academy (FMA), a PreK to grade 5 public school in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Although our primary focus is cultural enrichment, we include STEAM activities, learning about ourselves and our full potential, arts and crafts, book club, host guest speakers and field trips.
Our Story
In 2013, after many discussions about the academic success, effort and behaviors of our boys and girls of color, concerned FMA Teachers of Color and community activists (Frank Barnes, Vaughn Allen Goodwin, Julia Smith) decided to start a separate mentoring program for girls. A mentoring program for boys called Qualls Academy had already been established.
After many years and parent/student requests, in 2017, Jill Minot-Seabrook (retired Speech Pathologist), Aishah Abdul-Musawwir (retired FMA Library Media Specialist) and Amatul-Hafeez Mahmud, (retired Special Educator) started and currently lead the “Sisters With A Dream” (SWD) program. Our focus is to offer the girls an opportunity to believe in their ability to recognize and achieve their potential in all that they do. We believe it is very important to expose the girls of SWD to the lives, struggles and successes of women who look like them.
From 2017 - 2022, SWD has collaborated with the Lemelson Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (LMIT) with Ms. Leigh Estabrooks as our liaison. Ms. Rovi Porter (MIT undergraduate student) and Evelyn Garcia (LMIT instructor) to teach STEAM and technology skills related to our yearly theme. They hoped to spark the girls interests and confidence in potential STEAM related activities and careers.
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Themes Year by Year
2022 - 2023 Sports: Science & Medicine
2021 - 2022 Community Activism & Science
2020 - 2021 Veterinary Medicine & Related Services
Using Physics from Animal Anatomy for Inventing (Biomimicry)
2019 - 2020 Entrepreneurship With Inventions & Finance
2018 - 2019 Women Inventors & Their Inventions
2017 - 2018 Identifying Ourselves: Building Confidence & Self-Esteem
