Middle Bucks Institute of Technology (MBIT) Engineering Technology students selected as FIRST Global Challenge Mentor. In 2017 an Olympic-style robotics competition was established by the U.S.-based organization, The FIRST Global Challenge (FGC). The goal of the organization is to inspire youth around the world to pursue STEM careers and to use that knowledge to solve many of the world’s problems. The annual competition bases its competition around one of the Grand Engineering Challenges, such as water, energy, pollution, etc.
While many industrialized nations can select a well-prepared team of students to compete, there are other nations that struggle to field a team. For this reason, FGC established a mentoring program through which accomplished schools can mentor international teams with less experience.
Since 2019, with support from the Ohio-Based charity Shoulder-to-Shoulder, the Middle Bucks Institute of Technology has been mentoring teams in countries such as Honduras, Puerto Rico, and Ukraine.
Since June of this year, MBIT has been mentoring a team of students from an impoverished village in Honduras as they prepare to compete against 190 international teams in Geneva, Switzerland from October 13th through the 16th.
To celebrate the upcoming competition, the students of MBIT’s Engineering program had a Zoom session with Team Honduras on October 6th as Honduras made their final design changes to their robot. MBIT students had a chance to speak with the team, ask to discuss their design, and review their game strategy as they prepare to leave for Geneva. The students from both countries had a great discussion and learned about both engineering and each other’s lives.
FIRST Global website https://first.global/
Team Honduras page https://first.global/2022-nations/honduras-2022/