Yellow Scope Aims to Make a Different Kind of Science Kit for Girls

Portland, OR, November 05, 2014 --(PR.com)-- Yellow Scope, a winner of the 2014 Startup PDX Challenge, taps into research that shows girls learn best when they can approach projects in a creative and open-ended way. The kits are designed to engage both the scientific and creative minds of girls. The experiments are rigorous, with plenty of room for girls to draw their observations and doodle their ideas in their very own lab notebook.

Company co-founders Marcie Colledge and Kelly McCollum, both trained scientists, want to change the pervasive stereotype that science is for boys, a message that is reinforced in the toy aisle where real science kits that focus on chemistry and physics are marketed to boys and pseudo-science “spa” kits are targeted to girls.

“We want to hook girls on science!” said Colledge. “Women are vastly underrepresented in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields. While women make up almost 50% of the total workforce, they make up only 24% of science jobs. There’s been a lot of talk about the “leaky pipeline” and the gender imbalance in STEM. At Yellow Scope, we want to fix the leak early, while girls are still confident and enthusiastic about science.”

McCollum added, “At Yellow Scope, we believe girls can do anything. Every girl has the potential to excel in science, and we’ve designed our kits to intrigue and inspire them.”

The Yellow Scope kits will be available for pre-order on Kickstarter, from November 3 through December 22, at https://www.kickstarter.com/profile/yellow-scope-science.

If the campaign is a success, Yellow Scope plans to have its kits on the shelves of toy stores, starting with independent Portland toy stores in the spring of 2015.