YoMaP

All around the world, local communities are identifying the youth mathematician laureates among us, to recognize them and to provide resources for them to expand and elaborate upon their work to benefit their communities. Whether their terms are one year, six months, or otherwise, some are given offices and resources to accomplish their work, others create a program of projects with various agencies and organizations, some facilitate community gardens, investigations on behalf of their local watchdog associations or governing councils, while others meet with groups of various ages and interests to help them become more independent in their own mathematical practices. Still others work with development agencies, NGOs, and community organizers, to help regional communities plan sustainable forms of land use that enable the creation of thriving infrastructures and indigenous cultural celebrations.

 

Youth mathematician laureates are recognized for their ongoing accomplishments with further platforms that support the expanded use of mathematics in socially compelling and aesthetically impactful ways.

 

The Culture of the Mathematician Laureates

Laureates work with groups to listen. Laureates work with groups to learn. Laureates work with groups to create. Laureates do it again, and then again, together with others.

 

Mathematician laureates are rooted in principles of accessibility, inclusion, self-determination, collaboration, sustainability and life-long learning. In all of their work, they explore the stories behind the community experience, and they believe in the power of mathematics to express what’s most important. Mathematician laureates value community conversations and hands-on creation – and the deep understanding that can come from the combination of the two.

 

Together with others, mathematician laureates get their hands dirty. They work with reclaimed and recycled materials and tackle large-scale projects to show what’s possible when a group of creative and dedicated people set out to make or do something wonderful.

 

Mathematician laureates work with others to tap into our intellectual and our creative spirits. They teach in public schools and around a table, in gardens, and on the streets, in parks and swimming pools, on bridges and inside caves, making the connections between understanding, new ideas and hands-on making. And every time they teach, they learn something new that adds to the story. Mathematician laureates support the ongoing development of a  community of creative people who have this experience and activate it across issues and disciplines. They come to know that this learning is what brings us all together as an ever-expanding community, and that it is this way of learning and creating together that helps us make things better in our neighborhoods, cities, regions, and throughout the world.

 

The Youth Mathematician Laureate Project is at once an approach and a community. We are teachers, makers, organizers, leaders, students, advocates, dancers, performers and everything in between. We combine creativity and know-how to fulfill the vision of creative civic leadership.