“Do you have any pads?” a girl asked one of our mentors through sobs. “I don’t have money for the machine.” 
 
She was from a team from outside the U.S. — a country that does not require payment for menstrual products in public restrooms — and was panicking because she had no coins. As luck would have it, she had run into a mentor of an all-girls team that keeps tampons and pads in their pit. Although the lack of menstrual products may have been addressed in the moment, it opened our eyes to menstrual equity.
Consider a typical restroom. It wouldn't be acceptable to have toilet paper available only 20% of the time or expect people to pay for it. Why then do 80% of restrooms lack menstrual products or have empty or broken coin-operated dispensers?
 
Menstrual Equity refers to the affordability, accessibility and safety of menstrual products and is about making sure that people have the means, support, and choices to take care of their menstrual health.
m.e. FIRST, our initiative to ensure menstrual equity in FIRST, is a continuation of our 2021 Innovation Challenge project. While the idea was sparked by our members’ experiences at FIRST competitions and sporting events, our research showed clearly that this is a much larger issue. To have a fully equitable and participatory society, menstrual products must be safe and affordable to all who need them. This is the driving philosophy behind m.e. FIRST.
 
We began distributing pads and tampons at local FRC events. We found overwhelming support for our mission and set our sights on competitions beyond our region, developing an ambassador program for teams that were equally passionate about equity. We created a toolkit that provides an overview of menstrual equity, calculators for how many products to bring, templates for social media, event flyers, and signage for the products placed in restrooms. Ambassador teams can also order laptop stickers and buttons at no cost.
 
m.e. FIRST launched last season and 75 ambassador teams supported nearly 100 competitions around the world, providing thousands of free period products. We continued these efforts at the FIRST Championship and were able to cover the entire event of nearly 800 teams. 
 
This year, we are excited to be partnering with Aunt Flow, a company committed to universal access to menstrual products, to design a pad and tampon bundle that teams can easily order to cover their FRC competitions at a significant discount. Learn more about m.e. FIRST and sign up to be an ambassador team at frc.spacecookies.org/menstrual-equity. 
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This blog was submitted by Space Cookies, FRC team 1868. If you are interested in blogging for FIRST Ladies, click here to sign up on the schedule!

​We are FTC team 13735, the PiRates (πΔs) from Pitt County, NC! We strive to get out in the community to spread the word of FIRST and empower new generations to pursue STEM interests, focusing on traditionally underrepresented groups in the field. This past season (2021-2022), we pursued many outreach initiatives, and we would love to share some of our successes and hopefully inspire some teams looking for ways they can go out into the community! 

Inspiring Girls in STEM: We are passionate to support girls in STEM. We helped host Doyenne Inspiration, an off-season FRC all-girl and nonbinary student competition in 2019 and 2021, where we competed with 27 teams across NC and VA, reaching over 270 girls. 

This was our third year as NC’s Ambassador for #FIRSTLikeAGirl, where we shared resources to promote the program at competitions and events in the community. Additionally, this was our first year as a FIRST Ladies regional partner!

During the season, we hosted monthly meetings with the Boys and Girls Clubs for our program called Get the GIST (Girls in Science and Technology). We connected 12 girls with engineering college students for monthly talks and ended with a quick STEM activity. We aimed to get more diverse speakers so the kids were able to see themselves in them. 

Promoting FIRST: We developed a monthly program at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences called Get in Gear. We taught 156 elementary kids and their parents' concepts in STEM while introducing them to the FIRST core values. Each month, we would focus on a different science topic, creating activities that centered around the theme (ex: electricity, chemistry). 

One of our main outreach events that we run over the summer is hosting FIRST Camps with our sister team, FRC 2642 The Pitt Pirates. This three-week program focuses on FLL Explore, FLL Challenge, and FTC engineering and programming concepts. We used WeDo and Spike Prime kits, along with other fun STEM builds that we call our “STEM Treasures.” For the past few years, a few of the kids who’ve participated in the last week of the camp (the FTC-centric week) have joined the team!

Out in the Community: You can find us around the community showcasing the FTC program with elementary students. One example is Freeboot Friday festivals - an event held every Friday before an ECU home football game. We have a booth out there, and allow the kids to drive cardboard robots while providing more information about FIRST programs. We also attended two parades this season where we reached over 5,000 people. 

We also do many robot showcases and STEM activities with local churches. One favorite is Robox Sumo, where the kids design cardboard robots to push each other out of a ring. The competitions get pretty exciting, and it’s always fun to see the creative ideas they come up with. 
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Advocacy: We participated in Student Association for STEM Advocacy (SSA) National Advocacy Conference in June 2021, where we video conferenced State legislators about ESSA (Every Student Succeeds Act) funds and how they will benefit students participating in FIRST programs. 

We also talked in person and sent letters to our local legislators, asking for their support for the NC After-School Robotics Grant. We were excited to hear that the state budget passed funding $1.2M for FIRST teams in December 2021. 

Fundraising: One way we help the community is through Walks for Causes. We continue to raise funds for St. Jude, the American Cancer Society, and the Humane Society totaling over $3,900 over the past two years. 

Social Media: Our marketing team works hard to promote the team brand across platforms like Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram, which allows us to connect with other FIRST teams. Follow us @piratesftc on Instagram! 

This year has been a bit crazy, but we had a blast competing at tournaments and giving back to the community through our robotics outreach! If you would like to reach out and potentially collaborate with us, please DM us on Instagram. We would love to meet with other FIRST Ladies teams! 

This blog was submitted by PiRates, FTC team 13735. If you are interested in blogging for FIRST Ladies, click here to sign up on the schedule!

G-Force Robotics FRC Team #9008 is an all-girl, community-based FIRST Robotics Competition Team located in Clayton, North Carolina. We at G-Force Robotics have partnered with the Clayton library and Oak Ridge Computer Science Girls (ORCSGirls) out of Tennessee to offer free hybrid Girls Teach Tech classes as a part of our #FIRSTLikeAGirl and #GForceGirlsSOAR initiatives. In the simplest form, we offer these classes as a way to give back to our community. These courses are open to 5th-8th grade girls and this year our classes teach them everything from simple coding to 3D printing to the fundamentals of artificial intelligence. We started doing these Girls Teach Tech classes as a way to inspire younger girls and teach them about STEM. 

We are so lucky to have ORCSGirls as a partner to help us with our Girls Teach Tech (GTT) classes. After reaching out to Thomas Proffen, the founder of ORCSGirls, he agreed to help us set up and deliver our classes. So when we do these classes, the ORCSGirls half is online, and then the Girls Teach Tech half is in-person at the Clayton library. Our GTT classes fall under one of our main outreach initiatives, G-Force Girls SOAR. SOAR stands for Success through Outreach, Advocacy and Robotics. We do many things under this initiative in addition to GTT, such as a STEM literacy project, the President’s Volunteer Service Award program, and participation in the National STEM Advocacy Conference. 

We believe it is important to start a pipeline now to encourage and inspire young girls to be interested in STEM, which is why we promote it so much. The majority of STEM fields are dominated by men, and women often have to face numerous challenges when pursuing a career in this field. Some of these challenges include not being valued as equal by male co-workers, or people believing that women can’t be as smart or accomplish as much as men can. This is why there is a need to make sure that we, as high school girls, mentor younger girls to inspire and nurture their interests in STEM. We believe creating an all-girl team and hosting these classes is imperative because it's a great opportunity for young girls to get to know other girls with similar STEM interests, and also for us involved in G-Force Robotics, to build bridges for them to follow in our footsteps. 

Usually during our GTT classes we have around 15-20 middle school girls that we are teaching in-person at the library, along with about 20-25 students that are virtual. During our classes we will generally start off with icebreakers and introduce the members of the team who are helping with the class. We then move into the first thirty minutes of the class where Dr. Proffen explains the background of what we are learning on a Zoom call. After the background is given, we move on from the Zoom call and break into the in-person section of the activity. This is when our team members volunteering in the library help with hands-on teaching and assist with any questions the students have while completing the activity. These activities can range from designing a necklace with 3-D printing software (BlocksCad3D) that is later printed out and given to them, to making their own virtual reality video game. Additionally, the software these young ladies are being exposed to has many practical uses in the real world which can give them a great head start as they make their way into various STEM fields. The classes in total are approximately two hours, and every class we have hosted with ORCSGirls has been a massive success. We are very fortunate to have the opportunity to work with ORCSGirls and host these classes for such a great cause, and more importantly, to inspire and encourage the next generation of women in STEM!

This blog was written by Katlyn N. (10th grade) and Sloan M. (9th grade) of G-Force Robotics FRC Team #9008. If you are interested in blogging for FIRST Ladies, click here to sign up on the schedule!

​I’m an alumna of FRC Team 45, the TechnoKats, out of Kokomo, Indiana. After I graduated, I went to Purdue University where I majored in chemical engineering, and I was also a member of Purdue FIRST Programs, a group that mentors local FIRST teams and whose members volunteer at FIRST events. My time on my FRC team made me believe I was meant to be an engineer. But about halfway through my time at Purdue, I discovered something about myself: as much as I love STEM and learning about science, an engineering career was not for me.

I felt lost. I loved my time on my FRC team, and I still loved science and technology, but I had no idea what I wanted to do if I wasn’t going to be an engineer. I really thought that was what I wanted to do when I started college, but I learned that wasn’t the path I was meant to follow. And you know what? That turned out to be entirely okay.

In the chemical engineering school at Purdue, we were required to sit through a seminar class once a year where chemical engineering alumni came to talk to current students about their career paths and answer questions about their jobs so students got an idea of what options were available to them. That’s where I learned I could become a lawyer. One particular Purdue alum who came to talk to us worked as an intellectual property (IP) attorney for a major corporation. Many IP attorneys have STEM degrees from their undergraduate institutions, giving them the ability to analyze patent law and applications. 

It’s important to note here that I was one of those kids whose parents always said, “You’re going to be a lawyer one day.” Whenever I got into arguments with my parents or my siblings, I always had some kind of evidence or something to back me up, much to the chagrin of everyone in my family, because I was determined to be right. So, sitting in that lecture hall in the chemical engineering building, knowing I didn’t want to be an engineer, I started thinking more about what my parents told me when I was younger, and I asked myself: what if I went to law school?

Going to law school meant I didn’t have to change my major (and add on more time and take out more loans) because I could have whatever undergraduate degree I wanted and still be accepted into law school. So, I finished my degree at Purdue, applied to law schools during my final year, and then went on to law school. I just graduated from Indiana University Maurer School of Law with my law degree, and I’m confident this is where I’m meant to be. 

What does this have to do with STEM and FIRST? Full disclosure: I will not be an IP attorney, so I will not be in the STEM-focused area of law that IP law generally entails. But, I still used what I learned in FIRST and at Purdue every day of law school, and I’m sure I’ll continue to use those skills as I (finally!) begin my full-time job. 

In law school, you naturally have to do a lot of reading. You have to study the reading and be prepared to answer questions in class. My time at Purdue (which required hours and hours every night of tricky engineering problems) taught me how I study best, so law school was not an incredibly difficult leap for me in that area. Law school is also special in that you can engage in conversations with your peers about how various laws or theories impact different areas of life, bringing in your background and life experiences to discuss their applications. My time on my FRC team taught me how to work with all kinds of people, as well as how to communicate with different groups. It is not uncommon for engineers to struggle to communicate about their work or projects with non-engineers, and the same is true for lawyers and non-lawyers. Being on my FRC team taught me how to tweak my language to bridge the gap and talk to people from all walks of life. This helped me discuss different theories from different classes with my friends and peers, who had a variety of undergraduate degrees. In that sense, my time on an FRC team prepared me for law school in ways I could never imagine.

What do I want you to take away from this post? There are two things. First, I want to reassure any of you who are reading this that even if you love FIRST and STEM, but maybe you think you don’t want to pursue a degree in engineering or technology, you totally can! Do not feel guilty about pursuing a career that speaks more to your skills or interests than one in a STEM field, and remember that FIRST is about more than robots. It’s about growing as an individual, learning how to work on a team, and building a diverse skill set that gives you a fruitful career that you enjoy. 
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Second, and perhaps more importantly, I want to emphasize that FIRST prepares you for careers beyond STEM. As I said before, I learned both on my FRC team and as a volunteer how to work and communicate with lots of different groups. I’ve learned how to problem solve. I’ve discovered how I learn best. I’ve learned how to grow as an individual and a leader. I feel confident saying I would not be who or where I am had I not joined my FRC team all those years ago. I am grateful every day for those experiences, and I can’t wait to see how I continue to use and grow those skills as a working professional. I want to encourage anyone reading this to follow your passions. Even if you end up taking a winding path like I did, you’ll eventually end up where you want to be. FIRST made that possible for me, and it will do that for you, too.
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This blog was written by Kija Davis, alumna of FRC Team 45, the TechnoKats. If you are interested in blogging for FIRST Ladies, click here to sign up on the schedule!

Historically, we’ve held an annual women in STEM panel at the Greater Pittsburgh Regional (GPR), except for when we were unable to due to COVID-19. This year, we were excited to be able to resume in-person programming and hold our panel, but with a twist! We invited regional partner teams attending GPR to take part in a discussion about personal experiences in STEM from female mentors and students. We had representatives from 3504 Girls of Steel, 117 Steel Dragons, 4085 Technical Difficulties, and 7460 Avi and Friends, and it was really interesting to hear first-hand experiences from women in STEM, everything from how to deal with sexism in the workplace to how to deal with difficult workloads and find supportive communities. We all got to know each other over the course of the panel, and we also enjoyed talking with members of the audience who were passionate about supporting women in STEM. It was a great experience all around, and we can’t wait to hold another panel in 2023! Read more about it here.
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Buckeye Regional FIRST Ladies Meetup (March 2022)
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Back in 2017, during my first ever FLL team meeting, my mentor said to me, “The more you give to it (FIRST), the more you’ll get out of it”. I didn’t truly understand the meaning of this till today when I was reflecting on my FIRST experience. It wasn’t long ago – just 5 years earlier – when I was that reluctant and timid girl who hid backstage at the FLL regionals. That girl certainly had never envisioned spending five years enthusiastically through FLL, FTC and FRC. 

I believe that my journey epitomises the journey of every FIRST participant - a magical journey of the transformation that happens when one discovers the passion called FIRST! 

The most important lesson I learnt was in my first year of FRC. We had spent an entire year preparing – the robot was ready to go, our journals all printed, and our essays ready to be submitted. And then the pandemic struck like a bolt from the blue and the competition was cancelled. Although disheartened, I didn’t regret a thing. It was all still worth it! Every second of it! FIRST is not just a competition, it’s a learning experience. It’s the journey that matters. 

My advice – make the most of this journey. Immerse yourself in the FIRST experience. Try your hand at construction. Involve yourself in coding. And don’t forget outreach! I often see students overlooking outreach, but I promise you it is so fulfilling that your FIRST experience would not be complete without it. 

Enjoy yourself. While the work in FRC can sometimes be overwhelming and intimidating (building an industrial grade robot as a high school student surely is a daunting task!), you should foster an environment that is positive and stress free. Let your passion be the driving force. Take initiatives, volunteer to lead projects, and don’t be afraid to fail. Treat challenges as opportunities to learn.

See your teammates as your friends. I have forged some of the strongest bonds with my FIRST friends. If at any point you think you need support, find it within this FIRST community. Strive to create a friendly and approachable working environment knitted with efficient and effective communication. 

The last bit from my side – start early and stay consistent. Continued participation in FIRST year after year will give you the maximum rewards – you will see yourself grow through the experience, both as a STEM student and as a person. 

Trust me, FIRST is an experience like no other. Just give it your best and enjoy the journey!

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​Sally Ride​
Sally Ride was our 2018-2019 season robot. She was named after Sally Ride, the first American female to go to space. She paved the way for women in STEM and is an inspiration to us all. She was also an astronaut and that fell right into the theme of space in Rover Ruckus.