[waialua359]

The "international branching of FRC" is a good thing.
We consider ourselves part of this category of teams because we face similar hurdles when competing in the US Mainland, most notably at the FRC Championships annually.
However, as the mainland USA teams move forward as FRC has been moving towards more districts, more play, and district championships, teams like us are at a larger disadvantage with respect to needing a lot more resources in order to keep up.
The playing field is definitely not even and the disparity keeps getting wider and wider.
Teams that play in a district state championship are way more polished and get a lot more practice in preparation for FRC Worlds. We can name countless teams that started slow, only to get very very good by the time they got to st. louis this past year.
The biggest obstacle came in the form of an email right before Christmas where teams that play more than 1 event, would get no FedEx or transporatation/drayage support directly from FIRST. Besides feeling like we got blindsided, including the many teams we have talked to via text messages, social media, and emails......the bigger issue becomes how do we and international teams deal with participating in US mainland FIRST events, especially the Championships.
If the Championships rotated between different countries of participating teams, then it would be more fair. But that would never happen in the near future.
So in answering the original question, I'm not so sure that FIRST is the best thing out there to address students who have an interest in STEM, that is not part of the US mainland (or Canada).
IMO, if FIRST is to grow internationally successfully, it needs to first figure out how it will sustain and support current veteran teams that already participate vs. the priority to grow more teams.