Yamaha Volunteers and Scholarships Make STEM Fun for Camp Invention
Jul/02/2025
Yamaha Volunteers and Scholarships Make STEM Fun for Camp Invention
A unique summer experience for local students in Coweta County is thriving in part to assistance from Yamaha Motor Manufacturing Corporation of America and its employees.
Camp Invention, a four-day event at Ruth Hill Elementary School in Newnan, allows students to participate in STEM-related activities (science, technology, engineering, math) in a fun environment under the tutelage of experienced instructors. Yamaha provided 40 scholarships for students to attend – 15 from families of its own employees and 25 from the community at large – and several of the company’s employees volunteered to help as instructors.
Emily Kenyon, special education teacher at Ruth Hill Elementary School and the camp’s director, reached out to other teachers across the county to find interested students who perhaps could not afford to attend and would benefit from the scholarships.
“I think that it is extremely beneficial for students to attend the camp because it's truly just hands-on learning all week,” said Kenyon. “Many parents reach out to me and kind of tell me how meaningful that is, where they get to come back home and say all the things that they built and learned. While there are guidelines of how to do each activity, the kids truly have freedom to use their imagination and their creativity to make the camp their own.”
This year’s event focused on four specific activities:
“In Control,” in which the students created their own GPS systems, using Morse code to communicate with each other.
“Penguin Launch,” with small launches being built for robotic penguins.
“Claw Arcade,” the creation of claw machines which students then presented and lobbied for installation in arcades.
“Illusion Workshop,” which emphasized the creation of illusions through movement such as spinning wheels with attached motors.
Having Yamaha’s support has been vital to the camp’s operation, Kenyon noted.
Yamaha team members guided Camp Invention students at Ruth Hill Elementary through hands-on STEM projects that sparked creativity and fun.“The scholarships that they provide allow us to have a lot more campers than we would normally, and then having volunteers come each day is so helpful for our instructors and the campers,” she said. “A lot of our instructors don't teach STEM activities on a day-to-day basis. Having somebody else who kind of works hands-on with different types of things like that from Yamaha was super helpful to a lot of them.”
Members of the Yamaha team who participate in the camp have often expressed their delight at sharing these fun activities with young people.
“It’s special for me because I went to school at Ruth Hill, and back then we didn’t have as much exposure to STEM,” said Sydney Overton, one of the Yamaha volunteers. “It’s meaningful to come back and help provide those opportunities for today’s students.”
The instructors’ enthusiasm shows in their willingness to help set up each morning and pack up each afternoon, among other things. They go from room to room looking for opportunities to lend a hand with whatever activity is taking place, and that assistance has not gone unnoticed, Kenyon said.
This year the camp, with eight instructors and two assistant directors, hosted 139 student participants from kindergarten through sixth grade, along with two “leaders in training” who are in seventh and eighth grade and 18 “leader interns” who are high school students.
“It's a lot of fun to see all the kids from different schools and watch what they are doing,” said Kenyon, who was a camp instructor before becoming its director. “We only had maybe 10 kids from Ruth Hill, so it's a ton of kids who I don't get to see on a day-to-day basis. So it's really fun to see that opportunity for the whole county.”
Yamaha Motor Manufacturing Company (YMMC) in Newnan employs more than 2,000 metro Atlanta residents to design and build recreational vehicles at its Newnan manufacturing facilities. These facilities manufacture all of the world’s Yamaha golf cars and Side-by-Sides, as well as most of its WaveRunners and ATVs. YMMC takes pride in contributing to the local economy while producing innovative products that deliver unparalleled experiences to customers worldwide.
