Before my recollection was the quote:
… ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country …
This is from Inaugural Address by John F. Kennedy - January 20th 1961
In these days and times,
how would this quote apply to FIRST or VEX?
how does this quote apply to what we should be attempting to accomplish?
I continue to believe that we have been given a brand new “game” to play - how should we proceed?
Not exactly sure what your question is in this thread if I’m being honest. Do you mean as in how should we be helping teams?
Sure - how should we be helping teams.
But also,
how should we be helping our local FIRST organizations?
how should we be helping FIRSTHQ?
It seems to me that this discussion should be more focused on how we collectively raise STEM awareness and interest - perhaps how we support each other.
If I’m being honest, in the current climate, FRC teams are really just focused on helping their communities by being a resource for PPE. This in itself is promoting awareness of the importance of STEM. Teams should also be advocates of science, statistics, and facts; things we need more than ever before. We have students on 177 donating meals to homeless shelters, running coding classes online to fundraise for Covid related causes, and making PPE for those in need. I’d call that successful, as these students are doing all this independently of the team.
Helping other teams or helping FIRST is at the very bottom of my personal priority list. Typically it is as the top of my list, and we are out helping younger teams get funding and training them, but I can’t justify that considering we don’t even know where/if our funding is coming from for a potential 2021 season.
What teams should be doing right now is researching and applying to grants, and if there is a 2021 season, plan on a cost effective budget, ie maybe building 1 robot, not 2, fewer students traveling, etc. One note to add here: many many grants are currently not accepting applications or are not distributing funds because well funded charities are choosing to divert funds to local causes such as food pantries, which I fully agree with.
I see no way or reason I should be helping FIRSTHQ other than filling out surveys and voicing feedback if they’re willing to listen to it. They get their check, I get a game, that’s how this transaction works.
I agree with your description of what success looks like - that is quite an impressive list!
Part of my point is that those actions are what inspires other teams to perform similar actions/outreach and inspires those impacted by increasing their STEM awareness.
Perhaps that is what the “2021 season” is really going to be about.
More than in other years, perhaps this really is about more than just the robot.
I agree that actions to perhaps directly help FIRST are lower priority; however, I believe there are numerous actions that can be taken to further inspiration around STEM.
Oh absolutely. This all should be a reminder to teams that you don’t need FIRST or VEX to inspire people to care about STEM. They are great vehicles for inspiration, but we don’t need the robot.
We can continue teaching our students cool things, and continue to show our students and communities that STEM is about creating solutions for real world problems. It is about caring about the greater good and about our fellow human beings.
I totally agree that more than in other years, this one will be about more than just the robot.
The true inspiration was within us all along.
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