New educational company set to improve STEM-related education and careers

QuestFriendz, a STEM educational start-up company, aims to help increase the number of children who choose STEM-related education and careers, across gender and diverse ethnicities.

To achieve this, QuestFriendz focuses on young children, through interactive and imaginative educational play. QuestFriendz embeds storytelling and the four Cs of 21st century learning: Critical Thinking, Communication, Creativity, and Collaboration in every creation.

Founded by Lisa Moss and Dr. Thomas Bernard, they had the idea to create the Lillicorn STEM book series from a culmination of experiences throughout both of their professional and personal lives. The duo became aware of the STEM skills gap and lack of diversity some years ago during their time in university and throughout their working careers. From Silicon Valley scale-ups to global multinationals, the STEM skills gap and the gender diversity challenge continued to remain evident and problematic.

Since the birth of the couple’s twin daughters, they have had a strong focus in nurturing their interest in science. The challenge was how do they get their daughters interested in developing a curious and problem-solving mindset from a young age. They found that there were not many options for young children which combined storytelling, core STEM skills development and the nurturing of creativity, communication and collaboration.

Based on this the concept of Lillicorn was born. The Adventures of Lillicorn was brought to life with significant input and inspiration from their daughters as ‘chief creative advisors’. The series has been created to help children, aged 4 to 8 years old, develop core STEM problem-solving skills (e.g. sequencing, spatial perception, coding), while emotionally bonding with strong, courageous, and fun-loving characters. The first book in the series revolves around engaging storytelling written in rhyme and 10 interactive puzzle solving STEM quests. Sparking curiosity in STEM at an early age helps children to build both confidence and interest in further pursuing STEM education.

Visit www.questfriendz.com/meet-lillicorn for more information on the Lillicorn STEM series. You can also sign up to stay updated on upcoming products, educational resources and to pre-order a copy of the first book in the series. There are also lots of fun, educational activity sheets available to download!