[Koko Ed]

To those who do not care about ethenic diversity, it's obvious they won't because it won't effect them either way whether there is change or not. But it's a big deal to someone like me. So much so that my main focus of doing FLL is to increase minority involment in FIRST by hopefully inspiring them to stay with the program and move on to FRC, them to college and then to a productive career. I don't care if they become an X-Cat, a Sparx or a member of some team in another city, so long as they are involved.
One of the things I am most proud about on our team is our ethnic and gender makeup. We're probably one of the most diverse teams in FIRST. On the same token we don't exactly echo the makeup of our school (which is 65% black) so much so that someone actually thought Wilson Magnet was a suburban school.
Most of our team is IB kids and they probably would go to college with or without FIRST. Wilson Magnet has a 51% graduation rate. That means 49% of the kids don't make it for some reason or another (and Wilson Magnet is considered a very good school. Rated something like 166 is the country. Down from 24) and I don't know if participation in FIRST would or would not help them ( there is no one size fits all soloution in a society of individuals. Even FIRST can't be everything to everyone )but it's the possiblity of it helping that makes it worth the try to get them in. Unfortunately those kids want nothing to do with us and we really have no idea to get them in (we can't drag them out of the hall to the site and brainwash them into FIRST freaks). We can only hope.
The reason why we need to get to kids like these is because we don't want them to be dependent on goverment services to survive, thus draining resources that could have been used elsewhere when I think it would be better to get them to become a more productive citizen that contributes to our country's growth. That is what this program is ultimately about. To get you to realize the hidden potential within.