Our team also has the opportunity to do outreach with different programs, in past years we have helped organize and mentor FLL and FLL Jr teams through a local nonprofit called New Heights. Unfortunately, New Heights closed its doors, but we are looking for new ways to help continue our love of STEM community outreach.
If you, your company, or organization has any outreach opportunity that you think would be a good fit for our team go to our Contact Us page and feel free to send us a message.
New Heights Gala
A few years ago, some members of team 5902 went to the annual New Heights Gala. There they were able to talk to local sponsors and do robot demonstrations for the people that attended. We showed what our robot could do, such as what certain aspects of the robot were for. We also demonstrated how different aspects of our robot could complete different challenges.
Elementary STEM Days
In past years, members of our team have gone to the three Portsmouth Elementary schools to participate in a STEM day for the majority of students. During the day, members did robot demonstrations and answered questions about the FIRST programs offered in the school district. Short projects were also be led by students, teaching the older elementary students about the engineering process and STEM. This event will hopefully inspire more students to become involved in STEM and FIRST.
New Heights Barnraiser
Team 5902 was a collaboration between Portsmouth High School and New Heights. New Heights had an annual Barnraiser in October where representatives from different programs show what they have worked on throughout the year. Community members and potential sponsors go to the event and are able to talk to team members and donate to the team as well as to New Heights in general. This event was very important for our team because it allowed us to speak with the public and get in touch with potential sponsors and mentors in the community.
Robopalooza
Robopalooza is an annual event held at the Children’s Museum of New Hampshire. Robopalooza is a celebration of robots and the future of robotics. Different FRC, and other robotics teams, show off their robots to spectators and spread the values of FIRST. Other companies show advances made in the field of robotics. It’s a great event where we can talk to and collaborate with other teams during the off season.
Dover Mini Makerfaire
Every year the Children’s Museum of New Hampshire hosts the Dover Mini Makerfaire where “makers” from all around the area come to show off what they are currently working on. Our team uses this event to do demos of our robot and spread awareness about our team and FIRST. It is a great opportunity to talk to members of the community and potential members and mentors.
Women in Tech Event
A couple of our team members participated in a Women in STEM day; here we talked with women who have careers in different STEM fields holding different types of positions such as management or technical jobs. We were able to learn more about their personal stories about what it’s like for them to get their jobs. Having a better understanding of why there are fewer females going into stem careers was something that gave us the ability to work towards personally impacting the problem. We also talked to some people who hire people into the stem field and learned what they look for in new employees. They said that our connection to FIRST was valuable and would help us get jobs since it shows we have both people skills, as well as technical, know-how.
A couple years ago, three of our team members became mentors for younger students participating in FIRST LEGO League and FIRST LEGO League Jr.
We were able to help inspire elementary and middle schoolers to start their robotics journey early on! We loved being able to give back to a program that has given so much to us.
Alumni Accomplishments
FLL Animal Allies
Elisa helped to mentor an all-girls FLL Animal Allies team at New Heights. The team moved on to the State Championship, despite being made up of primarily rookie members. Elisa was previously a member of the all-girls FLL team for two years, and the team looked up to her and appreciated all the knowledge she was able to share!
FLL Jr. Creature Craze
Maya and Kelly each helped mentor a junior FLL team. The teams worked for several months to create models that showcased animals that live in the same habitat as honey bees. Maya and Kelly helped teams learn about the animals they chose and the basics of programming.
If you would like to follow us (and all of our community outreach initiatives) check back on this page and our blog as we post news about future community outreach activities.