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Originally Posted by Freddy204
On last year team, we had 4 females. This year team, we had 2 females. Next year team, we may have no females. I want to know how to get more female involment in our robotics program? How does your team do it? What advice can you offer.
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Talk to your previous females and find out why they aren't continuing (unless they're seniors)..Have those females do some recruiting around school.. Hold recruitment meetings at school, like any other extracurricular meeting does. Advertise that along with building a robot (mech, elec, software, etc) that the team also includes marketing and communications, fundraising, jouranlism (depending on newsletter type things you do, or you could get started, etc), websites, animation. Make sure they're aware it's not just this geeky robot building session. Make sure you tell them fun travel is involved!
I'm sure people on your team have friends that are girls. Talk to them, encourage them, tell them to just swing by. Do you do things in the fall? Do you go to off-season competitions you can invite them to? What community activities do you have? The key is to get them hooked prior to build season. Build season will be busy enough, and it may be difficult to familiarize new students with everything then.
Send out recruitment postcards to all the high school parents that appeal to them and getting their student a potential career in technology, and especially scholarships!! That might entice the parents to bring a kid to the meeting. Make school announcements. Post flyers. DO DEMOS IN SCHOOL. Set up recruitment meetings in the fall and have material to discuss with the students and parents when they attend. Show them videos and pictures of competition, and make sure you get the excitment across in your presentation.
Once you do get some interest, I would suggest holding some "girls night" sessions in the fall to introduce them to equipment, tools, FIRST as a whole, etc early on. Have only girls and a few mentors (maybe even 1-2 student team leaders) attend. They may feel less intimidated than when 30 guys are standing around and jumping into the work. It worked well for our team. They could make mistakes without feeling embarassed, and they weren't intimidated and tried new things. When a couple girls are outnumbered by a lot of guys, it's not as easy for them to be aggressive. Make sure the guys on your team are inviting and encouraging and friendly.
And, do you have Lego League teams in the area? Target them before they enter high school and make sure they know about your team.
Recruitment can be tough - keep at it, be creative.