![]() ![]() The second-largest source of the project’s website traffic, after South Africa, is the United States, where teachers have downloaded Super Scientist posters to hang in classrooms, Yarrow says. The project has garnered social media attention as well as coverage on CNN and local media outlets. Super Scientists, as the project is called, has donated more than 15,000 trading cards, activity books, and other materials to schools, community centers, and clinics throughout Africa. Two years ago, he set about creating a game played with a set of trading cards that depict real local scientists as Marvel Comics–style superheroes, hoping to stimulate children’s imagination and ambition. Yarrow, whose organization teaches coding skills in low-income communities in Umlazi, South Africa, wanted to show the children he worked with a different face of science-one that looked more familiar and attainable. “You ask them to name a scientist, and it’s Einstein, or nobody,” he says. Children in many communities rarely encounter a working scientist, says Justin Yarrow, founder of the educational nonprofit CodeMakers. Now, a new way to break down such stereotypes has emerged from South Africa, where Black people make up 80% of the population but Black researchers still constitute a minority of academics. Ask children around the world to draw a scientist and they’ll most likely sketch an older white man.
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