Robots in the Outback

[Phoenix Spud]

Last year, we went into the Australian outback to Yanko (pop. 300) and Ivanhoe (pop. 150) and helped each of them start a FRC team. (Check out the photos here.) The experience was incredible, in Ivanhoe we did JFLL, FLL, and FRC and got to teach kids who had literally never heard of a helicopter build robots. The teachers kept thanking us, but in a way we've never been thanked before... They kept thanking us for not forgetting their students. That's when it hit me, these are the forgotten children.

The statistics are quite bad. Basically children in the outback fall further behind their metropolitan peers every year. The statistics are even worse for those of Aboriginal descent. (For more information, see this report the New South Wales Government released.)

After the Ivanhoe FRC team attended the Sydney Regional, over half the team wants to attend university. Only 1 student in the past 20 years has gone onto university.

To reach even more students in the outback, we applied for a Google grant to expand "Robots in the Outback." This past Friday, we formally received a third of a million dollars to reach more towns like Ivanhoe. In particular, we'll be using a portion of the money to start 15 FRC teams in remote/regional/disadvantaged communities.

This is where we need your help.

We will need to go to each new FRC team during build season. We're currently looking for interested, experienced mentors to come to Australia and travel across the outback to the 15 communities. If you are interested, please reply to this thread or PM me.

We can guarantee you'll see kangaroos and emus while inspiring students who have been forgotten for far too long.