To inspire and engage students in science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics. We have given demonstrations and talks at Xavier's open house events, student orientations, school marketing, board meetings, and summer programs.
Connecticut Valley Hindu Temple - Last season, our team started a new outreach program, which was a huge hit. We heard about a Sunday Hindu school program conducted at a nearby Indian temple where the student participation was lower than expected. We decided to present the FIRST Robotics program and demonstrate our robot. Not only did we raise interest in FIRST, but also temple management requested us to visit regularly to improve their attendance. We are looking to enroll a few students from the Hindu Sunday School into an FLL team.
Fairs - We used our growing community relationships and our mentors to acquire and run the largest booth in the Discovery Barn at the Durham Fair. We organized the booth, designed the layout, and managed the other teams. While volunteering at the fair booth, we gave demonstrations for multiple levels of FIRST (FRC, FTC) and let kids drive the robots. We used four different FRC Robots: the FullMetal Falcons (4557)(Our former FRC bot), the Tech Tigers (3654), Elm City Robo Squad (558), and the Cognatives (8167). We also had the five FTC bots from Xavier, the FullMetal Peregrines (17703), FullMetal Kestrels (15668), FullMetal Phonexies (18813), FullMetal Merlins (18843), the Semi-Platinum Penguins (18978), and invited the Armored Artemises (16008). We also helped the Kestrels utilize repurposed We-Dos and EV3s from the Summer Camp and multiple Inspire kits and iPads to set up an FLL explore table.
FIRST Events - Always carrying the spirit of gracious professionalism on and off the competition field, we strive to share FIRST’s mission through volunteering at events. Last season, Chase volunteered at the FRC Charged Up Waterbury event and plans to do it again this year at the FTC Crescendo Waterbury event. Chase and Kaitlyn also plan on volunteering at this year’s FRC Crescendo Hartford event.
For the past four years, one of our members, Kaitlyn, has led robotics demonstrations, such as to a local middle school, Saint John Paul II, as well as to scout troops, aiding kids to earn their robotics badge. She also participated in the 2023 Global Leadership Summit and channeled her passion toward starting Girl Up at Mercy High School to support women's education worldwide while educating her community. She plans to fundraise for Ugandan refugees through Girl Up on March 1st, and is organizing a menstrual product drive in February to The Diaper Drive of CT in New Haven.
A Place Called Hope - In the past, we supported a bird rescue shelter, A Place Called Hope, with two eagle perches, a falcon perch, and a drive-through Falcons Helping Falcons, which helped us spread awareness of FIRST. While the outlook of the pandemic improves, many people still face significant financial impact. In hopes of lessening the burdens of those within our community, we created a food drive at the start of the pandemic that has since successfully brought in over 1400 lbs of food. Each year since, the Kestrels, Phoenixes, Penguins, and Merlins worked with us to collect food for the Amazing Grace Food Pantry.
Camps - From the lessened COVID restrictions this year, our ability to pursue community service significantly increased. This year, we ran a summer camp for five days that focused on STEM education for 5th- 8th graders. We increased their interest in FIRST through a wide range of interactive activities using TinkerCad, demonstrations of our robots, and bottle rockets. We also had assistance from the Kestrels, who ran specific programs at our camp, like EV3, Drag Racing, and Lego Siege Engines.
As a team, we participate in several outreach projects throughout the year. Some of which include our Xavier Robotics Summer and Winter Camps, Xavier Open Houses, Goshen Fair, Durham Fair, robot demonstrations at middle schools just to name a few.
At our Summer and Winter Camps, we work with students from 5th grade to 8th grade to demonstrate robotics concepts. Students participate in activities designed to teach different robotics and engineering topics, such as:
At Open Houses, we present our robots to parents and students interested in Xavier. We allow students to control the robots in a supervised environment and explain details of our program to interested students and parents alike. This is an incredible experience for us because it allows us to educate others with our knowledge of robotics, engineering, programming, and leadership.
At the Goshen and Durham Fair, we present our robots to those attending the fair. We also have a table for younger people interested in robots. We explain our implementations and the program as well with the open house. Well over 200,000 people attend these fairs, so this is a large part of our influence on the local community.
