Oakland-native Stanford student starts nonprofit to help kids learn about science

OAKLAND, Calif. (KGO) -- A Stanford student is doing his part to Build a Better Bay Area.

He's building kits to help kids learn science. An event was held to help distribute them to Bay Area students.

Twenty-one-year-old Stanford student Ahmed Muhammad started the nonprofit Kits Cubed in his backyard four years ago to teach kids about science in a fun, affordable and accessible way.

On Saturday, the nonprofit had its fourth annual STEM fair in Oakland, where it distributed kits to the first 1,000 students. Thirty partner organizations participated.

MORE: SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory hosts 21 Oakland middle schoolers for free 1-week camp

The organization has distributed about 50,000 science kits to children around the country. One kit Muhammad showed ABC7 News included all the materials a child needs to produce a solar-powered toy car.

"This solar-powered kit takes kids through sort of our planet and introduces them to climate change and introduces them to renewable forms of energy," he said.

The Oakland native says he wants to keep doing this outreach, including at schools.

"That includes deepening our impact in Oakland, as well as expanding our efforts in other cities and other places in the United States and beyond because the lack of equitable and fun science education isn't just an Oakland kid issue. It's a worldwide issue, and science is, as we all know, extremely relevant in all of our lives," Muhammad said. "And we need to prepare the next generation of leaders and the next generations of scientists and the next generation of engineers who can come from any neighborhood on the planet."

VIDEO: Meet the Morgan Hill student-engineers who built satellite NASA is launching into space

NASA's "CubeSat" Launch Initiative features great minds from across the country. But this year, only one project was made entirely by high schoolers.

The nonprofit received a grant from the Warriors Community Foundation to help support this work.

The foundation gave out a record $3.5 million to 62 local nonprofits last year, according to a spokesperson.

The STEM fair was on Saturday at Oakland Technical High School, which Muhammad attended.