Girls in STEAM

During the off-season, we participated in many all-girls competitions. These competitions are a great way to prepare our team for the upcoming season while supporting a cause our team heavily promotes: Girls In STEAM. A group of girls represented our team at the Bloomfield Girl’s Competition and competed in a large competition with many teams from around the state. Our team supported our drivers and robot from the sidelines while scouting to help our drivers for alliance selections. Our team did very well and made it very far into the competition. In addition to our success, we were extremely excited that our esteemed team member, Raaga Dandvolu, won a $1,500 scholarship from the competition!

The TPL Girls in STEAM Ted Talk was an amazing opportunity for our team to encourage and empower femine members in the FIRST workforce. We were not only able to reach girls on our own team, but were also able to inform young girls across the city of the importance of our goal. This season, addressing the lack of girls has been an important task for our team and we’ve been participating and hosting various events for this sole reason. The amount of people we can reach through these events is substantial and we hope to keep growing it with every event.

As a way to influence younger girls and promote them to choose STEAM endeavors, we participated in an event called the International Day of the Girl. The female leaders of our team discussed the different ways that we get girls involved on our team and the different opportunities they can indulge in by taking part in FIRST. Along with presenting, we also got to watch girls from other FIRST levels present about their team and what they have accomplished within the past year. This event allowed us to inspire many girls from other levels of FIRST and to be role models for the younger girls to continue on their FIRST journey.

A group of girls from Hammerheads 226 formed STEAM Sisters. This organization is composed of elementary and middle school girls, with a passion for engineering, learning, and programming. Through this organization, they experienced different aspects of STEAM. Team 226 presented robotics equipment and gave them hands-on experience. STEAM Sisters is free of cost and allows for girls within our community to indulge in STEAM activities during their weekly workshops.