As usual, the summer of 2019 was packed with amazing outreach events for Girls of Steel! We continued our summer camps, attended and hosted events, and worked towards our finance goals. We worked hard throughout the summer to transition into a 2019-2020 successful season filled with more opportunities to work with the community!

“Festival in the Park” Blueberry Hill Park in Franklin Park: Chassis Project, June 29, 2019

The Girls of Steel chassis projects are always a great way to reach out to people of all ages in the community. These events are not only extremely effective in generating more interest in STEM, but they are also a lot of fun for everyone involved! They show people that robotics is accessible to all people and can be enjoyable no matter who you are!

“We were able to reach a large amount of people in the two hours that we were there. A group of kids (some from our FLL Jr. teams) worked very well together and completed building the chassis. We were going to drive it, but it started to rain. The event was outdoors and sadly it was was completely rained out so we had to leave early.”

Homewood Maker’s Clubhouse Day Camp: Chassis Project & Snap Circuits, July 1, 2019

The Homewood Maker’s Clubhouse Day Camp was one of our teams chassis projects. Girls of Steel consistently makes efforts to reach out to communities all around us and show kids that there is a lot more to STEM than what they might know, and, most importantly, that they are capable of accomplishing amazing things! 

“I loved going to the Maker’s Clubhouse camp because we got to work with kids who were excited to be there. ”

NREC Presentation, July 3, 2019

NREC was the facility that hosted Girls of Steel for the past few years, however we are no longer working there. The presentation that a few girls on the team participated in was to share how we used that space and show that we accomplished a lot for the team and community while we were there.

“Getting to present at the National Robotics Engineering Center always makes me feel more connected to the STEM community at large.”

Gwen’s Girls Introduction to EV3 Robotics Camp, July 8 to July 10, 2019

Girls of Steel returned to Gwen’s Girls again this year and it was again a big success. We watched the girls become fascinated with what was being presented to them and show great interest in programming, building, and designing EV3 robots. There were many future roboticists in that room! Some fell in love with design, like sketching and problem solving, whereas others leaned towards programming. The girls were exposed to a new level of STEM that some hadn’t seen before, and hopefully it sparked a lasting interest for them that they will pursue in the future.

“This experience was extremely rewarding and was also so much fun! I loved seeing the joy that it brought to the girls and the skills and interests that they discovered while being a part of it! I hope that I can continue to be a part of this event in future years!”

Boys and Girls Club AI Camp Presentation, July 30, 2019

This event was a way to reach out to grade 9 to 12 students that have an interest in robotics and AI and, most importantly, a way for us to give them an opportunity to take part in it. Girls of Steel demonstrated how everyone can be a part of the FIRST community and open up doors full of opportunity. Everyone that walked out of that room felt inspired and ready to work on what they love!

“The AI presentation gave me an opportunity to present to others my age about our team and the effects it has had on me.”  

Robotics Feiyue Camp, July 22 to August 3, 2019

Girls of Steel finished another season of Feiyue, a 2 week FIRST Robotics boot camp for students from China. Girls from the team helped to TA at the camp and share the knowledge that they have from being on Girls of Steel, but also learned a lot from the students that were there. We TA’ed the students with members of team 3260, SHARP, and led them through a condensed version of our build season to build a robot to play this years game: Destination  Deep Space. We got to show them our methods and how FIRST teams go through the process of building a robot from scratch, as well as how the games and challenges work each year. But they weren’t the only ones learning, as girls and mentors oversaw the teams work, we can all agree that we learned a lot from watching different ways of approaching problem solving and building. The students split into two teams, team 9999 and 9998, which they named Hurricane and Tornado, to each build a competition style robot and compete in the Steel City Showdown off-season event hosted at Carnegie Mellon University on August 3rd. (Check out our blog post.) Both teams tackled difficult tasks and accomplished more than we expected possible in two weeks.

All of the students from China and the GoS and SHARP TAs had fun throughout the entire camp, and made plenty of new friends.

FIRST LEGO League Skills Camp, August 5 to 9, 2019

Girls of Steel also continued with another year of FLL Skills Camp. This event runs for a week and this year we held the camp at Newell Simon Hall on the main campus of Carnegie Mellon University. We had a full room of kids attend and split them into 8 teams to recreate the FLL Into Orbit challenge from the past year. They learned about teamwork, problem solving, and EV3 programming, designing, and building.

“It was really rewarding and fun as a mentor getting to see so many children excited about what we do.”

Presentation to a foundation, August 20, 2019

As well as more traditional outreach events, Girls of Steel presented for a grant from a small local foundation. Throughout the entire year there is a lot of fundraising effort behind the scenes that occurs, including applying for grants. The money that we receive from the grants we get helps us to run our outreach.

“I thought at first the idea of presenting to a foundation was very intimidating, but when we actually did the presentation, the board members were very polite and seemed really interested in what we had to say about Girls of Steel.”

FLL Mentoring started August 31st and continues through mid-December

The FLL teams that Girls of Steel run started meeting on August 31st. The new location for the FLL program is the Wilkins School Community Center in Regent Square. The teams will meet every Saturday and continue through our preseason, ending with a competition on December 14th. FLL mentoring consists of four hour meetings once a week where the 28 kids in grades 4 to 8 are split into 4 teams to build a robot for the City Shaper 2019-2020 FLL challenge. At the end of all the sessions the teams take their robots and research projects to Demo Day and then the championship competition, where they can show off to other teams and parents.