Ethiopia FLL mentor course by FRC 3211 The Y Team

[Tottanka]

Hello CD!
We are proud to present our latest project, hopefully to become a continuous one.
This June we (3 team members+3 mentors) started and ran an FLL mentors course for Ethiopian engineers and teachers. ~20 adults passed the full certification in Debra Zeit (around a 1 hour drive from the capital, Adis Abebe), and are now being spread all over the country to start multiple FLL teams in various locations.
The course was a huge success and will likely be followed by future additional courses, and hopefully a competition in mid 2017.
This was done thanks to the IsraAID organization, who helped with travel costs, purchasing ~20 FLL kits and Laptops for each future mentor.
You can view some pictures of the course here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkaN...ature=youtu.be

We hope this will keep growing and help Africa as a whole towards multiple FLL, FTC and FRC teams. We will keep you posted on future progress of this program.

For our students, it was an amazing and life changing experience. To have the opportunity of traveling to Africa at a high school age, and teach robotics to future mentors, knowing that you are making change in the future of African kid's lives is huge for us and we are grateful for this.

[Lidor51]

I'm so proud of the Y-team on this great project!
You took a huge step by trying spread FIRST in a country like Ethiopia, and I hope we will see in the future the impact on the country, and even the continent.
I'm sure that eventually both sides got inspired, and it's mean a lot!

[smitikshah]

What a wonderful opportunity for outreach on such a global scale- especially starting as high school students. For my own curiosity, I was just wondering -

1.) Why did you chose to work in this area specifically?
2.) How did you students decide/get involved with such an opportunity?
3.) How were the people in Ethiopia selected for such a project?

Thanks - love to see things like this become more common to help the world as a whole become more STEM oriented!

[Tottanka]

Originally Posted by smitikshah

What a wonderful opportunity for outreach on such a global scale- especially starting as high school students. For my own curiosity, I was just wondering -

1.) Why did you chose to work in this area specifically?
2.) How did you students decide/get involved with such an opportunity?
3.) How were the people in Ethiopia selected for such a project?

Thanks - love to see things like this become more common to help the world as a whole become more STEM oriented!

1. We were invited by the humanitarian aid organization - IsraAID. They contacted us as they knew we specialize in starting wide robotics programs with various kinds of populations, and in providing courses for future mentors and coaches.
2. Our students have been instructing similar projects for a few years now in Israel, and modifying it to fit the Ethiopian project didn't take a whole new approach.
3. They are mostly engineers or science teacher, who are willing to mentor FLL teams in the near future, and FTC/FRC teams in the bit more far ahead future.

Thanks for the kind words!