Much has happened since we closed the 2019 Season as the Detroit World Championship Chairman’s Award Winner. 1816 has kept busy with community-focused outreach events, fundraisers, and networking.
Early this fall, 1816 held a demo at Jerry’s Hardware, a longtime sponsor, and we also brought our robot to two Open House events at the MURA (Minneapolis Urban Robotics Alliance) field. All of these events showcase the value of FIRST programs and STEM. At these events, students had the chance to talk with community members about our robot and the FIRST robotics program.
One of our team’s Core Values is inclusivity, and 1816 has worked to promote that core value with outreach events that target underrepresented populations in STEM. At Fox9’s Girls, Science, and Technology event at the MN Science Museum, 1816 demoed our robot along with the all-girls teams FRC 2177-The Robettes and our FIRST Tech Challenge team, the Tough Cookies. Throughout the event, which attracts more than 10,000 girls and their families, we had over 1,000 girls try driving our robots.
Female team members also demoed our robot at the Medtronic Women’s Networking event, where they spoke with female STEM professionals about our team, our robot, and how FIRST has impacted them.
Another group that is often overlooked in STEM education is children in transitional housing. This October, 1816 returned to People Serving People(PSP) for STEMtoberfest, a five day FIRST League Jr. program that 1816 facilitates and designs for children staying at PSP. Kids planned and built their own moon rovers and recorded their work in an engineering notebook, having fun and learning valuable STEM skills along the way.
An overview of our fall outreach wouldn’t be complete without including fundraisers. In October, the team partnered with Topgolf to host our second Topgolf Fundraiser. 1816 also held a joint carwash with Edina FTC teams. Both of these fundraisers were successful, and both have helped us get closer to our funding targets for the competition season.
From fundraisers to robot demos, there’s been a lot going on this fall. Click here to see the full image gallery of 2020 fall outreach.