A Real STEM Lab for École Beausoleil

École Beausoleil serves 340 students in one of Moncton's fastest-growing francophone neighbourhoods, in a building that was "temporary" in 1998. Our science program is taught from a rolling cart — affectionately, le chariot de science — pushed between classrooms by teachers who deserve medals and budget lines.

You can't do real experiments from a cart. No gas, no sinks, no fume hood means no chemistry beyond baking soda. Biology is videos. Physics is whatever fits in a shoebox. Meanwhile our students keep qualifying for regional science fairs and competing against schools with labs that look like NASA. Last year, two of our grade 8 students prototyped a water-quality sensor at the public library because they had nowhere to solder at school.

The district has approved converting our oversized storage room into a proper lab and will fund the plumbing and ventilation work — if the school community equips it. That's this campaign: six lab benches with sinks and gas, a fume hood, microscopes, basic chemistry and physics kits, safety equipment, and a soldering and electronics station that would have saved our young engineers a lot of bus trips. Total: $20,000.

Donate in French, English, or Chiac — generosity is bilingual here. And when the lab opens this winter, every donor gets an invitation to the première expérience: 340 students, one fume hood, and the dramatic retirement ceremony of le chariot.