The Flourish & Bots Project

At the Arconic Learning Center on a Sunday morning, you can find 8 girls building and programming a robot in one room, another 10 girls building and programming a different robot, 10 girls working on business management, 12 girls building a lego model, and 2-3 girls coaching them all. This is the Flourish & Bots project. This group is comprised of one FTC team, two FLL teams, and three FLL Jr. teams. You may be asking yourself- “how did this come to be?”- to answer this, we have to go back to 2015. This was a magical year, the year when Flourish & Bots was first formed. Their coach, Theresa Barber, saw an influx of girls interested in robotics from the years 2013-2014. She coached the FLL teams at a local elementary school and during these years, had 11 girls on 2 different teams. Once these teams’ seasons ended, Barber chose to create a super team with these girls (one of them moved so there were the maximum 10 girls on the team). Thus Flourish & Bots was born. This team competed in FLL for 2 years before outgrowing the program and moving onto FTC. When we moved onto FTC, we decided to start an FLL team and two FLL Jr. teams as part of our outreach for FTC. Also, to share our knowledge of FIRST and FLL with younger girls. Going into our second season of FTC, we decided to add another FLL team and another FLL Jr. team to our program to accommodate all of the girls that wanted to be involved in this program. This leads us to what the Flourish & Bots project looks like today.
So far, over 50 girls have been impacted by this program and this number will continue to grow. This all started when 10 girls wanted to be on another FIRST team after competing in FLL for one year. The Flourish & Bots Project lets girls work together to accomplish tasks that most girls don’t get to do on a co-ed team. This program empowers girls and shows them that they have the magic within them to do anything.

Flourish & Bots: FTC 12863, FLL 2838, FLL 38323

​This blog was written by FTC 12863 Flourish and Bots. If you are interested in blogging for FIRST Ladies, click here to sign up on the schedule!