The Help Group’s STEM³ Academy, the first STEM school focused on young people with special needs, announces its Very Special Innovation Fair, a celebration of discovery and technology. This free family-friendly event will take place on Saturday, May 21 from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. at the STEM3 Academy campus in Valley Glen and is equal parts science fair, high-tech exhibition, art show, and community carnival.

Inspired in part by the Maker Movement, the event will have specific areas geared toward grade school, middle school, and high school ages and interests. In each area, there will be interactive opportunities for young people and families to build things, get involved in experiments and demonstrations, and take various gadgets for a ‘test drive.’

The Fair is produced by STEM3 Academy, The Help Group’s newest school, which takes the particular strengths of students with social and learning differences and connects them with a STEM curriculum that expands their life options and positions them for lifelong success. The school offers distinct tracks for middle and upper school with an elementary school opening this fall. A model school that infuses social and cognitive 21st century skills (collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and creativity) into a project-based curriculum, STEM3 Academy is an entirely new educational model for students with these needs. The program features include an Innovation Lab and Maker’s Space with various resources for building and making; internships and job skills development through partnerships with business and industry; senior projects geared towards developing new solutions to real-world issues; and resources and counseling for college prep.

“STEM3 Academy is transforming students’ lives and helping them find their passion,” said Dr. Susan Berman, COO of The Help Group. “The Very Special Innovation Fair is a chance for the community to see what is happening in STEM and how our young students are preparing to take these areas to an exciting new level in the future.”

The Very Special Innovation Fair will allow hundreds of attendees to have a first-person experience in a range of STEM-related fields, including rocketry, robotics, 3D printing and production, virtual reality, and others. Families will learn about the exciting things happening in STEM and how it is playing an increasing role in fields as diverse as manufacturing, medicine, design, and entertainment, among others.

“By 2018, there will be more than 8.65 million STEM jobs in nearly every industry you could possibly imagine,” said Dr. Ellis Crasnow, director of STEM³ Academy. “Technology is progressing every day, and the Very Special Innovation Fair is a way for us to show how that evolution is changing the face of both traditional and developing industries and to show people how science, technology, math, and engineering impacts our students’ day-to-day activities.”

For more information on attending, sponsoring, or exhibiting at the Very Special Innovation Fair, contact Melissa Spraul at The Help Group at mspraul@thehelpgroup.org or 818.779.5219. The Help Group’s Valley Glen Campus is located at 6455 Coldwater Canyon.

More information on the school can be found at www.STEM3Academy.org.