Outreach

In 2023, the Riveters took home a purple, 1st place banner from the FIRST Bloomfield girls competition. This competition focuses on encouraging young women to expand their skills in STEM by requiring an all-female drive team. This win was especially important to us as Bloomfield girls promotes the Riveter’s mission statement of encouraging and promoting involvement of young women in the STEM field.

Chocolate and Robots is an outreach event within Mercy High School, hosted annually by the Riveters, to encourage the participation of young women in FIRST Robotics. Every September, the Riveters create presentations, advertise FIRST, and provide delicious chocolate for Mercy students interested in learning more about FIRST Robotics and the Riveters.

Beginning in the 2022 Robotics season, the Riveters have helped to encourage equality throughout FIRST by providing feminine hygiene and care products in the bathrooms at competitions. Equality and equal opportunity is of the utmost importance to the Riveters. As we continue to persevere through the competition season, we continue to uphold our values of encouraging participation from young women in the FIRST community.

We believe in inspiring the younger generations and women in STEM. Our students help the students of the All Saints FTC team by teaching them about the basics of robotics. This includes assistance with programming and getting the robot to run how they wish. We also help prepare them for competition by asking questions similar to those they would receive from the judges. Our assistance with the All Saints FLL team is similar with us simply offering the students help when they need it. With the FLL team, we helped with programming and with difficulties connecting the program to the robot. We also provided assistance with the creation of their LEGO robots to ensure that their creations were capable of the functions they wanted them to complete.

At Mercy Highschool, the Riveters take every measure possible to ensure that Mercy Highschool is practicing the Riveters mission of encouraging participation of young women in FIRST and in STEM. The Riveters noticed a gap in the extra-curricular programs offered by Mercy and advocated for the addition of an AP Computer Science course offering. The Riveters were successful in achieving their goal and now, students of Mercy Highschool are eligible to take this course and further their studies in the STEM field.

We all know the benefits of a STEM education. We wanted to share those benefits by helping start an FLL team for a local elementary school. Getting starting is tough, supplies used can be expensive and there is often not enough time or expertise available. Our team addressed both of these issues by having an open line of communication with the principal of  St. Paul’s and the parents of the club members. For funds, the Robo-Panzers hosted a can drive within their community.We also contributed by donating our used cans to the Robo-Panzer. 

It was reaffirming to see same sparks of leadership emerge from both the girls and the boys. The students not only learned mechanical and programming skills, they also learned communication, teamwork and presentation skills. Proudly the students presented their robot to parents, staff and cohorts at the St. Paul’s Science fair. We are proud to share that as a result of this experience some of the eighth graders decided to pursue robotics in high school.