The Museum Mission
The mission of the Jersey Explorer Children’s Museum (JECM) is to provide educational enrichment to the thousands of children who visit the Explorer and to provide academic and vocational opportunities to the at-risk young adults from New Jersey Youth Corps who built and staff the museum.
The minute that children walk through the doors of this museum we want them to become explorers. Take a flashlight and search through the hidden passageways of an ancient tomb seeking out the treasure and the mummy. Go on a trip back in time in our time machine to places in our nations history or step into the future and join the crew of our spaceship on a journey across a distant galaxy. Dance to the music of the 1940s, 50s, 60s and 70s in our old soda fountain or join a parade down a street in a New Orleans neighborhood. Science demonstrations, art activities and puppet shows join exhibits and presentations that are all designed to reach children through their imaginations, to tap into their natural curiosity and to encourage them to see themselves as explorers.
Our staff of New Jersey Youth Corps students are young people who have dropped out of high school and who have joined Youth Corps to try to get their lives back on track. Many of our students are emerging from schools and neighborhoods that have been burdened by challenges of poverty and violence that have often undermined their opportunities for success. Our Youth Corps students are the museum’s carpenters, artists, storytellers and guides. They are the crew of the spaceship and the actors in the Time Traveler. Three days a week we provide educational programs for these at-risk young people who are completing their high school education in our GED program. Two days a week our corpsmember are the staff of the museum. Since 1992 the Jersey Explorer children’s Museum has been a pioneer in the areas of both exhibit design and youth development. Our 9,500 square ft. museum, located in East Orange, New Jersey, was among the first children’s museums in the country to include immersion exhibits in our design and the first to involve young people in all aspects of the creation of a museum. Through this unique partnership over two hundred and fifty thousand children and adults have been reached by our museum programs. Dozens of elementary schools and over 45 highs schools in the New York metropolitan area have brought us in to do programming in to their schools. In that same period over a thousand young men and women, who worked at the Explorer have obtained their high school equivalency diplomas while in our Youth Corps program.