Investing in the Next Generation

Our Powered by Ford STEAM Academies are designed to attract high-school students and prepare them for life beyond school. Alongside core academic subjects, students participate in engineering, information technology and manufacturing projects, which in many cases are conducted at our own sites.

We also award millions of dollars in scholarships to support social mobility, providing much-needed financial support to assist high-achieving college-bound students with their studies. In 2017 we awarded 100 Blue Oval STEAM Scholarships worth up to $10,000 each, including 29 to female students.

Ford Next Generation Learning (NGL) is a signature program of Ford Fund. Ford NGL has teamed up with the Ford STEAM program to support creative high-school students. The Ford STEAM High School Community Challenge empowers students to make a positive difference in their communities. Supported by $50,000 in grants from Ford and with participation from community partners, students use their technical skills to propose solutions that address unmet needs in technology, alternative energy, health and other areas.

In 2018, six teams from across the United States were selected to implement their inventive solutions. The winner, Spruce Creek High School in Port Orange, Florida, was awarded $20,000 to develop a smartphone application that enables people in disaster areas to communicate with emergency response teams, family and friends.

Runner-up, the Utica Center for Science and Industry in Sterling Heights, Michigan – a Powered by Ford STEAM Academy – will use its $10,000 award to harness centripetal force created from gym equipment through a turbine system to reduce the harmful use of resources to create electricity.

Four other teams, from California, Florida, Georgia and Texas, each received $5,000.

  Learn more about this year’s winning projects.

Robots are increasingly an important part of the workplace. Our FIRST^® Robotics program challenges teams of students to compete to fund, build and program robots to perform certain tasks, against tight schedules and with limited resources. Ford provides grants and mentor engagement to more than 100 elementary and middle schools and 87 high-school teams, helping them participate in a range of STEAM challenges. In addition, in 2017–18 more than 200 employees volunteered to act as mentors to Ford-sponsored teams.

Women are significantly underrepresented in the tech industry. To help address this, the Ford Research and Innovation Center (RIC) at Palo Alto, California, has partnered with Girls Who Code, a nonprofit organization that aims to inspire, educate and equip young women with the skills needed to pursue academic and career opportunities in computing. RIC is providing opportunities for young women interested in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).

Across the United States, Girls Who Code programs combine instruction in robotics, web design and mobile development with mentorship from top engineers at RIC. In this way, students gain exposure to real-life role models and hands-on experience on projects at our Silicon Valley research lab.

Around the world, there is a shortfall of young people entering engineering as a career. To help tackle this, in the U.K. Ford Fund supports Primary Engineer, a nonprofit organization that runs engineering-based courses for primary-school children (aged 7–11) with a £15,000 grant.

In 2017, we launched an exciting STEM initiative for primary-school children in 20 schools across Essex in the southeast of the U.K. We invited 40 teachers from 20 schools to the Ford Dunton Technical Centre to take part in a one-day practical course. The Technical Centre – home to 3,000 highly skilled designers, engineers and support staff – hosted the training day, which supported teachers and support teachers in the practical aspects of delivering a classroom engineering project.