We Are Sending Robotics Team to World Championships

Each year we help to raise money for Australian teams competing at the FIRST Robotics World Championships in the USA. It costs around $30k to send a team over and they have 3–4 weeks to raise the money.

This year we are hoping to raise more than ever and send students from Port Macquarie, Wollongong, Melbourne, Mount Ousley, Helensburgh and Sydney to the finals in Houston, USA.

If you want to see what FIRST is about, watch this video we made over the weekend. This is footage from the Regional Finals which we attended on Saturday and Sunday.

Or, feel free to click here to skip this email and just donate!

FIRST Robotics is far and away the best program we have found that encourages young Australians to get into science and technology. These students will be the future founders we hope to invest in. They represent the best of Australia and we will continue to support the FIRST program for years to come.

The outcomes are just astounding:

• FIRST Alumni are 2.6 times more likely to enrol in an Engineering Course at university.
• 75% of FIRST Alumni are in a STEM field as a student or professional.
• In Australia, Macquarie University guarantees FIRST Alumni a place in one of their engineering courses.

And these are just the measurable outcomes. The anecdotal stories that come out of FIRST are incredible. We’ve met a young woman who was selectively mute until she enrolled in a FIRST program. She hosted a bunch of our investors and CEOs for a VIP event and was one of the most eloquent and beautiful speakers we’ve heard.

We’ve seen remote high schools, with no STEM curriculum at all, enrol in FIRST and within 2 years offer programming courses and robotics classes.

We’ve seen opposing teams drop their own tools to help a struggling team fix their robot.

The list goes on.

World Championships represent a once in a lifetime opportunity for many of these students. It is a crossroads in their life — an experience that will shape them for years to come. We have specifically picked teams to support that we think deserve to go, but are from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

If you can, please consider making a tax-deductible donation. We’ve had donations from as little as $20, all the way up to $10,000. Every little bit counts.

To make a donation, please head to our crowdfunding page. We also ask that you share this message with your own community.

FIRST Robotics fosters in young people a strong sense of community, responsibility and a passion for science and technology. Help us to support the next generation of great Australian leaders.