At Stella Maris Explorers, every grant award represents a shared investment in children, families, and the future of our community. Through the generosity of foundations, corporations, and public agencies, we are expanding access to hands-on, wonder-filled experiences rooted in our PLACE-making mission:
Together, these partnerships are helping transform learning experiences for children along the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
Stella Maris Explorers welcomes partnerships with foundations, corporations, civic organizations, and community leaders who share our vision of helping children become creative problem solvers, critical thinkers, and innovators.
Contact Us to learn more about sponsoring programs, funding educational initiatives, or partnering in future community impact projects. hello@stellamarisexplorers.com
The Mississippi Arts Commission awarded Stella Maris Explorers funding to present A Country in Motion: A 3D Workshop through American Art History, an ambitious thirteen-part arts education series serving children ages three through nineteen in our Explorers Club and Commodore's Club programs.
This workshop invites young artists to journey through the story of America by exploring major artistic movements from Indigenous North American art through contemporary and future art. Through sculpture, assemblage, relief work, dioramas, wire sculpture, kinetic art, and other three-dimensional media, students learn how artists have interpreted, shaped, and responded to the world around them throughout history.
Rather than simply studying art, children actively become artists themselves.
Over the course of the workshop, students will explore a rich range of artistic movements, including:
At Stella Maris Explorers, we believe every child deserves the opportunity to create, not merely observe.
The primary goal of this workshop is simple but transformative:
To help children create art and believe themselves capable artists.
Enrolled children will learn artistic terminology, techniques, and art history while developing critical thinking skills, creative confidence, and an appreciation for artistic excellence. Success is measured not only by the artwork produced, but by each child's ability to understand artistic concepts, discuss the works they study, and apply new techniques to their own creative projects.
Mississippi homeschooling families have limited access to public educational arts resources, making meaningful visual arts instruction difficult for many children to obtain. Through support from the Mississippi Arts Commission, Stella Maris Explorers continues providing affordable, high-quality arts experiences that would otherwise be inaccessible to many Gulf Coast students.
The project is designed to serve a diverse population of learners, including neurodivergent students, through adaptable teaching methods and inclusive learning environments.
"The arts help children understand both where they come from and who they are becoming. Through this workshop, students experience American history not merely as observers, but as creators."
The VELA Education Fund invests in innovative educational opportunities that empower families and expand learning outside traditional systems. Through this award, Stella Maris Explorers is strengthening its mission to provide accessible, high-quality art, faith, and science enrichment for homeschooling families along the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
Mississippi remains a "zero-access" state for many homeschooling families, leaving parents without access to public funding, resources, or enrichment opportunities. Stella Maris Explorers was founded to bridge this gap by creating a unique educational community where curiosity, creativity, scientific exploration, and faith formation thrive together.
VELA funding supports the expansion of our learning environment through flexible furnishings, instructional equipment, acoustic solutions, and space-enhancing resources. These improvements help us welcome more students, reduce waitlists, and increase participation in our signature Explorers Club program.
Stella Maris Explorers currently serves children from PK3 through 12th grade in a model specifically designed for families. Since our founding in 2022, enrollment has grown from 22 students to 85 students, with additional children on a waiting list. VELA's investment helps remove space-related barriers so that more children can access wonder-filled learning experiences rooted in beauty, truth, and goodness.
Every child deserves a PLACE to belong, learn, create, and thrive." This grant helps Stella Maris Explorers continue building that PLACE for families across coastal Mississippi.
The Coast Electric Foundation invested in a vision that extends far beyond a single classroom. Through this grant, administered by The Gulf Coast Community Foundation, Stella Maris Explorers transformed its educational lending library into a robust community resource that provides educators, families, and organizations with access to high-quality, hands-on learning materials across the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
Funding from the Coast Electric Foundation enabled Stella Maris Explorers to develop and acquire:
As a result, the library expanded from a modest collection of science-focused materials into an interdisciplinary resource center containing:
Today, educators and families can browse the complete collection through our online catalog: https://www.libib.com/u/stellamarisexplorers
Unlike traditional educational purchases that serve a single group of students, the lending library model allows resources to be used repeatedly by many learners throughout the year.
During the grant period alone, the library served approximately 900 users, supporting learning in:
Each resource box is carefully curated to provide a complete educational experience, combining books, equipment, supplies, lesson plans, and instructional materials into a single package that educators can immediately implement.
The Coast Electric Foundation's support also made it possible for Stella Maris Explorers to establish and organize dedicated storage and office space for the library, creating the infrastructure needed to manage inventory, facilitate checkouts, and support future growth.
In keeping with our commitment to local impact, project funds supported numerous regional businesses, including:
The success of this project revealed both the tremendous need for educational resource sharing and opportunities for future growth. As the library continues to expand, Stella Maris Explorers is working to strengthen educator outreach, improve technology systems, and increase awareness among schools and community organizations.
Most importantly, this investment created a lasting educational asset that will continue serving students, educators, homeschool families, and community organizations for years to come.
By making high-quality educational resources available through a lending model, the Coast Electric Foundation helped create opportunities for hundreds of children to explore science, engage with the arts, deepen their faith, and discover the joy of learning.
Through support from the Mississippi Arts Commission, Stella Maris Explorers presented A Year with Mississippi Artists, a twelve-week arts workshop that introduced children to the rich artistic traditions, cultural heritage, and creative voices of Mississippi. The project served children ages three through nineteen through our Explorers Club and Commodore's Club programs.
This workshop invited students to explore a central question:
How does art shape our communities, strengthen our faith, enrich our daily lives, and inspire positive change?
Throughout the academic year, students studied Mississippi artists, folk traditions, public art, pottery, quilting, illustration, sculpture, printmaking, and mixed-media techniques before creating original works inspired by what they learned.
The workshop examined six interconnected themes:
Art as a Healing Tool
Students explored how art brings comfort, supports healing, and builds resilience in communities. Children created handmade cards and studied artists whose work responds to personal and community challenges.
Art as the Zest of the Quotidian
Students discovered how artists elevate everyday life through illustration, pottery, and functional design while creating and illustrating their own stories.
Art as Reflection on the Created Order
Drawing inspiration from Mississippi landscapes, ecosystems, and natural beauty, children created mixed-media paintings celebrating wonder in the world around them.
Art as Encountering God
Students explored faith-inspired and folk-art traditions before creating sculptures from found objects that reflected their own beliefs and experiences.
Art as Catalyst for Change
Through printmaking and the study of artists who transformed themselves and their communities, students learned how creativity can become a force for renewal and growth.
Art as Community Builder
The workshop culminated in collaborative quilting projects that demonstrated how art strengthens relationships and creates community across generations.
Students encountered an extraordinary range of Mississippi artists and creative traditions, including:
These artists and traditions helped students connect their own creative work to the larger story of Mississippi culture and place.
The primary goal of the workshop was not simply to teach art techniques.
It was to help children see themselves as artists. Participants learned artistic vocabulary, explored diverse media, practiced new techniques, and developed a deeper appreciation for the creative process. Students showcased their work through a public art exhibition, while high school participants collaborated on a capstone project documenting their experience and learning.
Through A Year with Mississippi Artists, children discovered that creativity is not something reserved for professional artists. It is part of who they are, part of their community, and part of Mississippi's story.
The Sparklight Giving Fund invested in Stella Maris Explorers' commitment to making high-quality STEM and STEAM education accessible to homeschooling families along the Mississippi Gulf Coast through support of our Outer Space & Engineering Science Workshop. Through this project, students explored astronomy, engineering, technology, and scientific experimentation in a hands-on learning environment designed to spark curiosity and wonder.
As part of our Spring 2025 Explorers Club semester, children ages three through eighteen participated in a fifteen-week study of outer space, space exploration, engineering, and related technologies. Students investigated the planets of our solar system, Earth's moon, constellations, spacecraft, and the innovations that make modern exploration possible.
The workshop emphasized learning by doing.
Students engaged in hands-on experiments and interactive projects designed to reinforce scientific concepts through exploration and discovery. Topics included:
Rather than simply reading about science, students experienced STEM concepts through active investigation and problem solving.
The Sparklight Giving Fund recognized a challenge facing many Mississippi families: access to consistent, high-quality science enrichment.
Mississippi homeschool students do not have access to public funding, district-owned resources, or school-sponsored laboratory experiences. As a result, many families struggle to provide the type of hands-on scientific experimentation that inspires a lifelong interest in STEM disciplines. Through support of the Outer Space & Engineering Workshop, Sparklight helped Stella Maris Explorers address this gap by providing meaningful science experiences that might otherwise be unavailable to participating children.
At the time of the project, the Explorers Club served approximately sixty enrolled students and was helping meet the growing demand for educational enrichment among homeschooling families throughout the Mississippi Gulf Coast region.
Children exposed to science, engineering, and technology at a young age are more likely to view themselves as capable scientists, builders, inventors, and innovators. Through the Outer Space & Engineering Workshop, students developed scientific knowledge while building confidence in their ability to investigate, question, design, and create.
For many participating families, these experiences would have been difficult or impossible to provide independently due to cost, equipment needs, and limited access to specialized resources. Sparklight's investment helped ensure that children could experience rigorous STEM learning regardless of their educational setting.
Through Sparklight's support, children were given opportunities to look beyond the horizon, explore the universe, and discover that they too can become scientists, engineers, innovators, and explorers.
The Mississippi Arts Commission provided one of Stella Maris Explorers' earliest arts education grants, supporting an eight-week Impressionist Art Workshop designed to introduce children to the techniques, history, and beauty of the Impressionist movement while helping them discover their own artistic abilities.
Serving children ages three through fifteen in the Explorers Club, this workshop combined art history, hands-on art creation, and interdisciplinary learning to provide homeschool students with access to high-quality visual arts education often unavailable outside traditional school settings.
Over eight workshop sessions, students studied four influential artists whose work transformed the art world:
Each unit introduced students to major artistic concepts while allowing them to create original works inspired by the featured artist.
Projects included:
Along the way, students explored:
The most important objective of this project was simple:
To help children create art and believe themselves capable artists
Children learned artistic terminology, studied masterworks, practiced new techniques, and developed confidence in their own creative expression. Success was measured through observation, discussion, artistic production, and students' growing ability to recognize and apply Impressionist concepts in their work.
Consistent with Stella Maris Explorers' interdisciplinary approach, the workshop connected art to concurrent science studies.
As explorers explored human anatomy, they strengthened their understanding of figure drawing through the works of Cassatt and Renoir. During studies of outer space and the natural world, they investigated how light, atmosphere, and observation influence artistic expression, deepening their appreciation for Monet and Seurat's techniques.
This integration of art and science reflects SME's belief that the education of the whole child requires opportunities for children to see connections across disciplines.