Make money for your team, have fun, help the planet.

[ebarker]

Kell Robotics was honored along with 7 other groups at the SeaWorld/Busch Gardens Environmental Excellence Award ceremony April 21,22,23 in Tampa Florida.

A video produced by SeaWorld/Busch Gardens media is posted right here.

A delegation from our team was there 3 days, 2 nights, all expense paid. Air and ground transportation, Embassy Suites hotel, food, parks, & entertainment.

The day we arrived the Adventure Island water park closed at 5:00. At 5:30 our get acquainted party began. We had the whole park to ourselves. Two dozen students, a dozen chaperones, and four or five dozen park employees. Music, food, pirates....arrrg

The next day we fed the animals, toured the park in the day, and in the night (when it is closed) we had dinner at the awards ceremony with Jack Hanna. And then we went and sat around a fire circle in the darkness chatting with Jack, surrounded by the animals on the plain. Yes there was a fence !! And then Jack handed us $ 10,000.

Please listen everyone !!!! - It is very difficult for a typical school group to combine robotics with environmental conservation. But YOU are not a typical school group. You are a FIRST, VEX, or other robotics team. If you want to combine technology and robotics with something like environmental conservation you are better positioned than anyone on the planet to take advantage of this opportunity.

YOU can take skills and knowledge you have learned in your robotics competitions to do something like we did and earn a place at the EEA, promote your robotics program, promote FIRST (or other group), help the environment, get the coolest vacation in the world, and $ 10,000 on top of all of that.

You can think of the EEA as being like the Chairman's Award of student environmental stewardship and scientific research. Plan on a long view, a lot of fun, and a lot of work. But I can guarantee you it is definitely worth the journey.

View the pictures here