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How to Establish Good Outreach in FIRST

1/23/2025

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What is outreach:
Outreach is a team’s way of establishing their values for FIRST®  and STEM throughout the community. This can involve activities like networking with professionals, visiting robotics labs nearby, coaching and mentoring other FIRST teams, volunteering and STEM-related activities and so much more.

Why is outreach important?
Outreach is important because it allows for your team to demonstrate how it made an impact on the STEM community, and spread FIRST values. A few FTC awards such as Connect, Motivate, and Inspire (the highest-ranked award) are all based on a team’s outreach. Outreach usually takes up 2-3 pages of the Engineering portfolio, which is usually 16 pages. Judges are looking for a diverse set of outreach events that have been done throughout the year, and demonstrate a clear impact and gracious professionalism. If your FTC team isn’t sure how to establish good outreach, here are some tips and tricks for where to find opportunities.

How to establish outreach:
1. Cold email professionals and ask to be mentored
  • This may seem intimidating, but there are many templates online that can help you reach out to professionals. Simply search ‘How to ask for a mentor over email’ and Google should provide many options. Another option is to ask for mentors in the “Unofficial” FTC Discord Server and get help and advice there virtually. 
2. Research science fairs/events nearby
  • Start by compiling a list of science events near your team on a document or spreadsheet. Local events could be found on Eventbrite, on blog pages, and in magazines. Note the date of the event and whether they allow exhibitors to sign up somewhere, and if not then contact them directly to ask about participating!
3. Sign up to demo at STEM showcases
  • Many elementary and middle schools have science fairs or STEM nights that allow people to demonstrate things like robots, coding, and engineering practices at. Check out the local schools in your area and see if there are any opportunities like that nearby.
4. Ask nearby FIRST teams if they need any help or want a mentor
  • Mentoring or helping other teams is an amazing way to give back to the FIRST community. You can connect with a team on the FIRST Mentor Network, if an 18+ team member makes an account as a mentor, or by asking local FTC teams either online, through social media, or using connections. Mentoring can involve providing advice to a team, helping a rookie team learn about FIRST, providing feedback on engineering portfolios, and more.
5. Ask more experienced teams for their mentorship
  • Take note of any very skilled teams in the area and consider reaching out to them and asking for their mentorship. That way, you can get invaluable advice on engineering, teamwork, programming, and more. Chances are, a team would say yes since that means they get some outreach out of it.
6. Volunteer in STEM-related activities

How to talk about outreach in the engineering portfolio:
Outreach should be described in a specific way in the portfolio to be deemed impactful. A few strategies some teams have used:
  1. Categorizing if the impact is local, state, national, or international. 
  2. Sharing how many people reached, what kind of people
  3. Describe outreach in 1-2 sentences
  4. Sharing how many hours were dedicated to outreach
  5. Including key images as proof
  6. Being specific about what the team itself accomplished and their impact
A simple way to keep track of everything is using a spreadsheet. A tool like that can then count up all the values in one column and provide useful outreach analytics for the portfolio.

​- Allison A., Green Gang, FTC Team 24158 
Instagram: 
https://www.instagram.com/greengangftc/​
​
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FTC Team 14917 Asteria: who we are

1/7/2025

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Hi FIRST Ladies! We are FTC Team 14917 Asteria, based out of Marlborough School for Girls in Los Angeles, California. As we came together for the first time collectively this year, we’ve forged a shared identity, fusing together elements from our prior teams to propel us to success. So far this season, all of our team members have applied advanced Onshape skills to our collaborative robot CAD, utilized our expertise of shop tools like the ShopBot CNC to fabricate custom parts, and consistently iterated our subsystems, refining the construction of our physical robot. Within our community, we’ve hosted after school workshops with local schools, connected with STEM professionals around the world, and highlighted under-appreciated members of the FTC community, our volunteers, through an interview series. 

However, none of this would be possible without our unique team structure which allows us to effectively collaborate, communicate, and execute our goals. As opposed to a sole captain, a popular choice amongst FTC teams, we have a leadership team. Composed of both a Team Captain and several Division Heads, each leader has a specific role or task to oversee, such as fabrication or social media. Our leadership team meets weekly, discussing and collaborating about the more niche aspects of Asteria. In addition, all twelve of our team members identify as women and gender minorities, creating a tight-knit community of inclusion and mutual respect. With this, we hope to serve as an example for FIRST teams across the globe, showing that gender identity and success are not mutually exclusive. 
​

Thank you so much for taking the time to learn more about our team, and if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out!

Email: [email protected]
Instagram: @team14917
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