The Spark Ignites the Future!

By: Arielle, Arianne, Avery, Jade, Joy-Marie, Taylor, Team 45250G, St. Thomas, Ontario, Canada. January 2024.

Team 4525

Robotics

in 2018 a group of teenagers from small-town st. Thomas Ontario wanted to find a way to explore their passion for stem this sparked an idea robotics the spark ignited into Vex team 45 to 50 g Not only was it the first team in all of Elgin County but it was also an all-girls team and continues to be 7 years later the spark ignites Community original team of four passes for going to so many students at a regional school that we grew from one time to 11 and now include over 50 students we realized that there were no other stem programs like this in our community so our team wanted to spark the passion for Robotics and younger kids to provide the learning opportunities we didn't have at their age we parted all nine of her Elgin County Libraries to create and run a new stem outreach program that provided an introduction to Robotics and computer science to hundreds of kids the best part is that we know that the spark continues to burn as many of the kids we have taught other libraries grown be members of our bikes in today we pick 9 at the spark of competition one of the most exciting things in robotics is competing the problem was there were no other Vex teams in our area outside of our school solution Catholic School Board robotically we knew that if we love competing that kids that other high schools would too and if we have leads for hockey and basketball why do robotics so we prepared a presentation and hosted a meeting to pitch the idea to our school board member in science and technology teachers we convinced them right away and the spark Advance once more we then work with our new superintendent to secure funding and grant money for each of our District 9 high schools each school then received a Vex robotics competition field in a robot super kit as well as transportation to our school for a series of tournaments that we hosted after just one year or nine schools in the board are feeling a total of 2018 duration we thought if we created a tournament to include every school are bored why not try to include communities outside ourselves so we partnered with the Canadian stem Charities to help develop another robotics event the Ugandan robotics week AKA do you are call Championship we collect equipment to help schools in Uganda to create their own robotics teams through Parts drives and fundraising we applied experience in robotics competitions helped design and build game pieces so be used for the Euro competition to do this our team hosted the first official V RC event in our region and donated all of the proceeds to sponsor the Uganda tournament we will even be entering robots of her own in this event and delivering donated stem equipment and curriculum to local elementary schools ignited by a passion for stem which we quickly discovered was not meant to be contained it is a spark that I can't be extinguished fuelled by Passion and share to our local Regional and Global communities The Starry Nights of future