What is the name of your organization?
Mizzen Education, Inc.
What is the name of your solution?
Mizzen Education
Provide a one-line summary or tagline for your solution.
Equipping out-of-school time educators with high-quality content + professional supports that spark student curiosity & love of learning- 100% free.
In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?
Marina Del Rey, CA 90292, USA
In what country is your solution team headquartered?
United States
What type of organization is your solution team?
Nonprofit
Film your elevator pitch.
What specific problem are you solving?
7.8 million American youth attend out-of-school time (OST) programs, but all too often, the practitioners who make these programs happen have to spend precious time searching for high-quality content—or adapting lesson plans that were designed for somebody else or some other setting. Mizzen Education exists to change the equation.
During a time of increasing chronic absenteeism and disconnection from school, high-quality OST programs have been shown to create the positive learning experiences that improve school-day attendance and engagement. Yet higher-income families spend more than five times more on OST programs than the lowest-income families, creating an opportunity gap that perpetuates educational inequity.
Mizzen addresses these challenges by providing completely free, high-quality digital resources that work in diverse OST settings. By removing financial barriers, Mizzen helps educators confidently deliver engaging learning experiences that combat learning loss, foster belonging, and build essential skills, despite limited resources. For youth, this means transforming supervision hours into meaningful skill-building opportunities that spark curiosity, joy, and a lifelong love of learning.
What is your solution?
Mizzen is a free platform that provides OST educators with evidence-informed, ready-to-use lesson plans and professional development resources. Designed specifically for OST environments, Mizzen helps educators spark curiosity, build essential skills, and engage students through hands-on learning.
Mizzen is accessed via a mobile app (iOS, Android) or browser-based site. Our library includes 1,800+ activities and lessons in subjects like STEM, literacy, SEL, sustainability, and the arts. Lessons can be searched or filtered by grade, topic, duration, or standard, and each includes clear learning goals, a materials list, printable worksheets, and links to professional development.
Mizzen for Teams enables organizations to streamline program planning with shared calendars, centralized resources, and collaborative scheduling tools—helping staff coordinate seamlessly while maintaining consistent, high-quality learning experiences for youth.
What makes Mizzen unique is its unwavering commitment to equity—removing barriers so educators, regardless of geography or budget, are resourced to create engaging OST experiences for students.
Over the next year, Mizzen is investing in increasing our repository of quick-bite video PD content to help educators implement lessons with fidelity, and building game-changing AI tools to quickly tailor lessons to different ages, class sizes, languages and contexts.
Demo: https://bit.ly/MizzenEdu
Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?
Mizzen is designed to serve the approximately 600,000 OST educators and 7.7 million kids who attend OST programs across America, with particular focus on those living in underserved communities. These educators often work in underfunded, informal settings like afterschool programs, summer camps, libraries, and community centers. Many have limited curriculum, minimal planning time, and few opportunities for professional learning—despite serving diverse student populations with evolving needs.
Mizzen provides free, educator-designed instructional resources and professional development that are flexible, intuitive, and tailored to OST environments. This eliminates cost and availability barriers that often prevent educators from delivering engaging, consistent instruction.
By equipping educators with hands-on, standards-aligned lessons and on-demand training, Mizzen improves program quality and strengthens educator confidence, deepening student engagement. The platform also advances real-world outcomes like learning recovery, identity exploration, and social-emotional growth—especially vital for youth in communities historically underserved by traditional school systems.
With 23,000+ educators and 560,000+ students already reached, Mizzen is making learning more joyful, inclusive and impactful—equipping educators to spark curiosity and inspire the next generation, wherever they teach.
