Check Out Kristie Akl’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Kristie Akl.

Hi Kristie, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
kidSTREAM was conceived on a long, angry drive home to Ventura County. Earlier that morning, I’d arrived at our local children’s museum only to find it unexpectedly shuttered; a permanent closure I didn’t yet know was coming.

To salvage the day, I drove my three sleeping toddlers an hour east to Pasadena’s Kidspace.

There, amid the “buzz” of children building, failing, and trying again, I saw a plaque honoring the local women who had sown the seeds of that museum forty years prior. Looking at my babies in the rearview mirror on the drive home, a nagging question took hold: Why don’t we have this?

Ventura County is a coastal, agricultural patchwork of cities that often function like islands. Despite our proximity to the Pacific, my research revealed a staggering reality: many of the 200,000 children in our county had never even been to the beach. Early, experiential learning should not be a luxury dependent on whether a parent can navigate a 90-minute drive between naps and work shifts.

My urgency was fueled by my years as a high school biology teacher. I was haunted by ninth graders who entered my classroom already convinced they were “not good at science.” Somewhere between kindergarten and high school, natural curiosity had been replaced by a crushing aversion to failure. By 14, students were already self-selecting out of subjects because we had dimmed their spark.

I didn’t want my daughters to lose that spark. I realized that if I wanted a “runway” for their curiosity, I would have to build it.

The journey from a “museum without walls” to a physical landmark took a decade, which is the standard “blueprint” for such a feat. What started at my kitchen table grew into a collective of educators, parents, and donors. We spent years in the community, bringing engaging engineering challenges to schools and festivals. One favorite involved nothing more than coffee filters, pipe cleaners, and a wooden Bernoulli blower. We watched thousands of children – who had never considered themselves “STEM kids” – lean into problem-solving without fear.

In those moments, the silos between families and educators dissolved.

The City of Camarillo stepped up in a transformative way, after years of leasing a small space inside of a long-vacant library, with the goal of proving the concept of a children’s museum in our “Vision Room,” as well as extensive feasibility studies to prove that investment into play has a return, the City donated the building and surrounding land, creating a tipping point of momentum just as the world began to re-open post-pandemic. Partnerships with the Autism Society of Ventura County and local schools ensured that this space would be inclusive by design, not by afterthought. And the Amgen Foundation, committed to increasing access for STEM pathways, tipped the capital campaign from fundraising to groundbreaking.

I would be remiss not to mention the thousands of others, from throughout our community, who gave so much to ensure that this project fulfills our promise to our children: We were building a launchpad, not a safety net.
A children’s museum is not just a room full of toys; done right, it is civic infrastructure. It protects possibility before labels settle in. If we want fewer young people arriving in high school convinced of their limits, we must invest earlier.

We must build spaces where experimentation is safe and failure is expected.

Today, when I look in my rearview mirror, I no longer see sleeping toddlers. I see teenagers who look with pride at the kidSTREAM building as we drive past. I also see a dedicated team of staff and a board of directors preparing for our grand opening this summer.

I’ve learned that “Founder” can be a dangerous word if you don’t know when to let go. Starting something is hard; letting it grow beyond yourself is much harder. But kidSTREAM belongs to the community now. Long before policy debates begin, a four-year-old needs a place to test gravity with a coffee filter and believe she belongs in the room.

Every community needs that runway.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
We incorporated as a nonprofit in 2016, and were ready to host our first big fundraising event at the time of the devastating Thomas Fire in 2017, which had us step back from raising money and looking toward our community. We hosted events to honor our First Responders.

In 2020, one month after we hired our inaugural director (first staff member!) Covid shut the world down, and we responded by developing STREAM kits to distribute as well as a deep catalog of online curriculum for our community.

Community is actually embedded in our 3-wavy lined logo: It’s the symbolic triple bottom line of sustainability and community is one of those three key components, and we continue to see this project as building community.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I am a former science teacher, and continue to work with curriculum development in both formal and informal education settings.

Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?
kidSTREAM will be opening late May with a phased opening, and it’s a close drive from Los Angeles, so we invite your readers to come visit.

Pricing:

• Early Membership: $425
• Ticketing TBD

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.kidstream.org/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kidstreamchildrensmuseum/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kidSTREAMChildrensMuseum
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@kidstreamchildrensmuseum

Image Credits
These photos have been used in kidSTREAM materials for some time. Photographers names unavailable and uncredited.