Starting New Teams

[Anthony X.]

I know that this is a bit of shameless self-promotion here but I believe its pertinent to this thread.

Our team has had excellent results at recruiting new teams this year with the help of one of our major sponsors. With the backing of the Toronto District School Board, one of the major sponsors of our team and of the new Canadian Regional, new teams in the Toronto area were basically guaranteed that the majority of their costs for their rookie year would be covered.

The TDSB paid for the registration costs to the Canadian Regional of every rookie team that signed up for FIRST this year and gave each of them additional funding to help build their robots. This has been a very effective incentive in recruiting teams. There are now 6 new FIRST teams in the Greater Toronto Area alone with the strong possibility of more joining in the new couple of months. (Six new teams in one city in one year is a lot!)

Where our team came in in all of this was that our Team Coordinator basically started the ball rolling in the creation of the Canadian Regional. Additionally, he has been, for the past five months, actively trying to recruit new teams by meeting with principals from various schools in the Toronto Area. Lastly, our team has held various 'Open House' events where schools were invited to attend presentations describing what FIRST was about. The cumulative effect of all these initiatives have resulted in very strong results.

Anthony.