International Day of the Girl is celebrated globally on October 11th in order to highlight and address the needs and challenges girls face throughout the world. With girls being one of TPF4Y’s three priority populations, we decided to celebrate locally with our first ever Girl Powered robotics event!
Almost 50 girls from VEX Robotics teams in central Indiana participated in the event, with a focus on first- and second-year teams. After enjoying pizza and a chance to meet girls from other teams, participants split into three groups to visit stations led by student volunteers that focused on:
Design - Claire Bishop, a freshman who splits her time between homeschooling and Greenfield Central High School, led a brainstorming session that covered the pros and cons of different robot designs and prompted the girls to discuss the strategy involved in choosing the best design to fit your team’s goals.
Programming - Lauren Meyers, a Junior from Heritage Christian School, led the coding station where she reviewed basic strategies for coding a robot to perform tasks autonomously. She introduced coding to those students who had never coded before and covered more challenging coding strategies for experienced students.
Game Play - Jessa Steffen, a 7th grader from Hamilton Heights Middle School, led the game play strategy station where she reviewed all the tasks that need to be completed throughout this year’s game. She broke down the different strategies a team might use to accomplish these tasks and discussed the importance of clock management.
After each group had a chance to participate in all of the stations, the girls listened to a short panel discussion featuring the three student volunteers as well as Casey Matczak, a parent of one of the girls who has a career in electrical engineering.
The event and panel discussion were designed to encourage more girls to get involved in STEM programs, especially robotics. “It’s important for girls to engage in STEM because you use STEM in your everyday life,” said Jessa Steffen, one of the student volunteers. “And we need more women in the workforce.”
If you’re interested in supporting TPF4Y’s work with girls and other priority populations throughout Indiana by ensuring that more events like this can take place, please consider making a donation on Giving Tuesday! We appreciate your dedication to our goal of providing access to #Robots4All!
