#firstbadgeworkshop

[7351ftc]

Following the success of our FIRST Badge Workshop earlier this month, we continue to get incredible feedback and significant additional interest.

In order to address this need, we had a meeting with  Girl Scout STEAM Manager for Chicago and Northwest Indiana.  It was a great meeting where we discussed a number of options for attempting to meet these needs including scaling events, check out kits and program templates.  Based on discussions, it is believed there may be approximately 10,000 additional primary candidate Girl Scouts in the region that would have a similar need.  The next step is to gather targeted data on optimal areas to extend our workshop to with possible locations to partner with the Girl Scouts.

This continues to get more and more exciting and is a perfect fit for our role as FIRST Ladies Regional Partner. . .  We look forward to getting demographic data from the Girl Scouts to see where this thing goes.

[7351ftc]

Today was a day to take our role as FIRST Ladies Regional Partner to the next level.  We completed a three session FIRST Badge Workshop.  The event was aimed at empowering girls through hands on exposure to STEM and robotics.  

Each participant was introduced to robotics through four stations: wiring, coding, building and driving.  It was an honor to share this experience with the over 120 Girl Scouts spanning Daisies, Brownies and Juniors as each achieved a Certificate of Completion to provide to their Troop Leader as proof of accomplishing the required steps for achieving the three available robotics badges at each level.  

This pilot program served approximately 20% of the region’s service unit and spanned scouts representing approximately 60+ troops.  The event was a HUGE success and we had a blast!  We can’t wait to bring this concept to the larger Girl Scout community and see if it can scale to an even wider audience.

[7351ftc]

After a long day of bringing STEM and robotics to the community, some times you just have to chill and reflect on great accomplishments.