The First Month: a Recap

Our First Set of Meetings

When I first arrived at the start of September, none of the Rwandan schools had started yet. So, the majority of what we were doing the first week and a half was having meetings with other organizations, administrators, and government officials. The purpose of these meetings was to reconnect with people who Amelia had worked with last year and set and propose goals for the FIRST LEGO League (FLL) and FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) programs in Rwanda. The most frequent meetings we had were with Coderina (the FIRST LEGO League Central Africa Operational Partner), the Rwandan Basic Education Board, UNESCO, and with student mentors and other volunteers.

FTC "Robot in 7 Hours" Workshop

To get the motivation for starting the FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) program off the ground early, in mid-September we ran a "robot in 7 hours" workshop over 2 days. We invited students from the older Rwandan FLL teams to a community STEM space in Kigali called the Creativity Lab. We gave them a brief introduction to each of the aspects of FTC and then gave them a REV FTC kit of parts with instructions to build a basic drivetrain. The students seemed very excited and invested, and they were even able to program it to drive around by the end of the second day.

Donations from FIRST Global Challenge

FIRST Global Challenge, or FGC, is an Olympics-style robotics competition with 191 countries represented. Last year, my FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) team won the world championships, which selected us to represent the United States at the 2023 competition in Singapore from October 5-10. However, since my teammates and I graduated from high school and were ineligible to participate as FGC student team members, we attended as coaches, mentors, and volunteers, and those of us spending a gap year with STEM Inspires, used this opportunity to further our goals for STEM outreach in Rwanda.

To build their robot, FIRST Global gave each country's team a kit of REV Robotics parts, which is roughly equivalent to two of the kits necessary to start an FTC team. So, we approached several teams about donating their kit, or parts of it, to the Rwandan FTC program after the competition was over. We received several smaller donations, and Team USA and Team Great Britain both donated their robot and remaining kit pieces. 

In addition to this, REV Robotics generously allowed us to fill two big boxes with parts that would be useful for the Rwandan FTC program. In total, we received enough parts and electronics for 4 FTC robot kits, as well as plenty of spare parts. This is a huge step towards our goal of 10 FTC kits. Below are photos of the teams donating their robots and a picture of all of the donations laid out:

What's next?

Now that school has started in Rwanda, much of our focus will turn to visiting schools daily to provide mentorship. We are also organizing the upcoming FIRST LEGO League (FLL) launch where coaches from each FLL team will learn about the new season and receive their materials.

FIRST LEGO League (FLL) Goals

• 100 total teams
• 20 teams from each Rwandan Province, and each province has a regional tournament
• 30-team national championship

FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) Goals

• 10 total teams, made up of the older Rwandan FLL teams that competed last year
• Have the teams compete in a showcase at the FLL national championship, to gain support for FTC to expand in Rwanda in the coming years