Hello Champions Board members! I hope your February is off to a great start. Here are a few updates for you. COLLABORATION INSTITUTE: Many of you expressed interest in attending all or part of the Collaboration Institute. The Collaboration Institute will be in Kansas City, Missouri April 7-11. Institute activities will begin at 2:30 pm on Monday, April 7 and end Thursday, April 10, at 4:30 pm. We are excited to be partnering with the Midwest Afterschool Science Academy (MASA) 5.0 as well as connecting our training to the Missouri Girls Collaborative STEM Initiative<http://www.ngcproject.org/collaborative/missouri-girls-collaborative-stem-initiative> Conference, so new Leadership Team members can see an event in action! You may be interested in attending MASA as well. Please visit: http://www.ngcproject.org/cinstitute2014. This website is your resource for everything you need to know about the Institute. In addition to the registration form, this website includes information on Frequently Asked Questions<http://www.ngcproject.org/frequently-asked-questions-1> and Travel Details<http://www.ngcproject.org/travel-details-1>. We held a preparation webinar for our attendees that you may want to review for more information. The recording and slides are here: http://www.ngcproject.org/pre-institute-webinar-recording-slides. This will be the last Institute we offer as part of our NSF grant. Available funding is for new leadership team members from priority states. Champions Board members who attend will be asked to pay a fee to cover the cost of meals and materials. More information is on the website. If you are considering dropping in for a specific topic, please feel contact me and we can discuss topics that would be of most interest to you. Tara Canobbio, our wonderful Board member from Google, attended our last Institute in DC and found it very helpful in furthering her understanding of NGCP. PRINTING RESOURCES/SPONSORSHIP NEEDED: We provide printed resources and folders for events in more than 29 states. We work with more than 20 partners, facilitating delivery of exemplary resources either directly to our Collaboratives or to us and then we distribute as needed. While we have been transitioning to more electronic resources, we still have tremendous demand for our NGCP brochure card, Program Directory information, folders, and FabFems materials. We did not anticipate this level of printing costs when we wrote the budget for our current NSF grant and we are looking for sponsors to assist us with printing. If you have ideas or recommendations, I would love to hear them. We would be happy to add sponsor logos to reflect this valuable contribution! STEP INITIATIVE - WOMEN IN MANUFACTURING: Yesterday, I had the honor of speaking at the STEP Awards<http://www.themanufacturinginstitute.org/Initiatives/Women-in-Manufacturing/2014-STEP-Awards/2014-STEP-Award-Honorees/2014-STEP-Award-Honorees.aspx> in DC, hosted by The Manufacturing Institute. The Women in Manufacturing STEP (Science, Technology, Engineering and Production) Awards honor 160 women who have demonstrated excellence and leadership and represent all levels of manufacturing, from the factory-floor to the C-suite. In the next few weeks, we will be announcing a new partnership with the Manufacturing Institute to engage these award winners and their colleagues in mentoring and role modeling. These women will be adding profiles to the FabFems directory and we will be connecting them directly to organizations in the Program Directory who have indicated a need for role models and speakers. More to come about this partnership soon. We hope to create similar partnerships with other key STEM affinity groups over the next few months. Thanks so much for all you do to spread the word about NGCP! Have a great weekend! Karen Karen A. Peterson, Chief Executive Officer, EdLab Group<http://www.edlabgroup.org/> & Principal Investigator, National Girls Collaborative Project<http://www.ngcproject.org/> voice: 425.977.4750 kpeterson@edlabgroup.org<mailto:kpeterson@edlabgroup.org> [ZA102637857]<http://www.linkedin.com/groups/National-Girls-Collaborative-Project-4344096?gid=4344096&mostPopular=&trk=tyah&trkInfo=tas%3ANational%20Girls%20C>[ZA102637858]<http://twitter.com/ngcproject>[ZA102637861]<https://www.facebook.com/ngcproject>