The impact of our initiatives on hundreds of SDP students is the most important part of our work. We areable to see the long-lasting effects of everything we do on the students we engage with. Students whohave engaged in our programs recognize the value that FIRST brings and go on to create their ownteams. Our team has facilitated education in everything from how to use a screwdriver to how to use alathe. Students at our summer camp went from feeling like they didn’t belong in STEM to developingleadership skills and building robots. Our work provides equitable STEM opportunities to historicallyunderprivileged populations across our city. Through our dedication to our community, we utilize FIRSTas a tool for change as we inspire and prepare the next generation of STEM leaders in Philadelphia.;

Through our robot demos at events such as the Society of Cable and Telecommunications EngineersExpo, the International Conference on Robotics and Automation, and the Philly Tech Week SignatureEvent, we’ve been able to make new connections with prospective sponsors, recruit mentors, and furtherexpand our reach.Outside of building these relationships, we also demo our robot at our school’s spring fair and speak tostudents at our freshman club fair. We invite students who aren’t members of our team to drive ourrobots to continue to build a presence in our school community. To ensure all interested students haveaccess to our program, this year we expanded our program by growing from three internal FTC teams to6, including 49 more students and experiencing growth of 45%, solidifying our position as the largestorganization at our school

Providing support to so many teams requires our own continued sustainability.

As we work to increase STEM equity in our city, we have designed a new initiative to involve morewomen in STEM. This initiative is entitled Women in Robotics and Engineering (WiRE). WiRE is a 12-week afterschool program intended to encourage middle school girls in Philadelphia to pursue careers inengineering. Each weekly meeting features hands-on engineering experiments led by female STEM

Along with being connected to a network of role models and mentors, students will gainexperience with the engineering design process by developing their own engineering projects andsharing them with their peers.

One of our newest initiatives is HackaJawn, an event that includes both a hackathonand an endurance FLL competition for high school students. Both competitions will last a full 24 hoursand offer new and exciting ways for students to learn more about programming. Throughout the event,our team members will run skill-building seminars on an assortment of topics.

SUSTAINABILITY

FUTURE PLANS

To provide events in the city to our many teams, we run 5 official events: the Philadelphia FTC Qualifier,2 FLL Challenge RQTs, and 2 FLL Explore Festivals. In addition to official competitions, we run thePhiladelphia FTC Scrimmage and RoboJawn, our series of offseason events for FLL and FTC teamsintended to encourage continued progress after their official season ends.We have volunteered at 33 events, 14 of which we have run, since the end of last season. Our team hasdedicated well over 2000 hours to volunteering in support of our mission throughout this season alone.

We have discovered 2 major barriers to event attendance during our time supporting teams;geographic proximity and scheduling conflicts. If events were not accessible by SEPTA, our city’s publictransit system, we saw drastic drops in attendance levels from teams and students.

EVENTS

We ranthe camps for 7 weeks at 4 different sites. Campers built and programmed robots for FIRST LEGOLeague Challenge under the guidance of RoboLancers students. The 60+ campers learned about FIRSTand were informed on how to continue participating during the school year.

In addition to this school-wide implementation, this past summer we began our first foray into runningsummer camps as a collaboration with the Philadelphia Department of Parks and Recreation andInspiring Minds Philadelphia. These established programs provide us with the space, students, andsupport staff needed to provide free robotics programming opportunities to underserved youth.

his programrequired 218 hours of intensive support. Students participated in the program as a part of their digitalliteracy class. Hamilton students comprised the equivalent of 50 teams across all three levels of FLL. InNovember, we ran their internal qualifier, in which three FLL Explore and two FLL Challenge teamsadvanced to the official Philadelphia events.

For the 2022-23 FLL season, we embarked on our first attempt at a full-school implementation of the FLL programs at Andrew Hamilton Elementary School.

COACHING

WORKSHOPS

MENTORING

HAMILTON & SUMMER CAMPS

Through these efforts, we are also able to provide teams withrole model representatives from their communities. In this year alone, our students have mentored 23

This year, we’ve vastly improved our reach by connectingour students to teams in their neighborhoods. This utilizes our members' diverse backgrounds and skillsets to provide more widespread support.

In 2018, we beganoffering programming mentorship. However, we wanted to expand this resource to provide one-on-onesupport to all of our teams in different areas.

In addition to trainings and workshops, teams benefit greatly from individualized support.As our team grew, we knew we could provide a variety of technical assistance.

In addition to establishing support for coaches, we run workshops to connect teams toone another. We run Design It!, Build It!, Program It!, and Drive It! to help guide FTC teams through theirseason. In order to create a successful program, we work to support and encourage teams in each stageof their season and allow teams to collaborate, while also connecting them to knowledgeable studentvolunteers.

Currently, we are contracted as an official After School Enrichmentvendor with the SDP. In the process of advocating for this contract, we guaranteed that coaches withinthe SDP would be paid by the SDP for time spent coaching. Last year, nearly $100K was distributed bythe SDP to these coaches and an estimated $750K will be distributed this year. To provide even moresupport, we run 5 coach training events at the beginning of the school year. Our team members workdirectly with coaches to provide them with the knowledge and insight they need to successfully lead aFIRST team. Coaches build and program robots of their own with support from RoboLancers studentsand collaborate with coaches from other teams to create activities for their students while beingintroduced to the FIRST Core Values. Throughout the school year, we run additional trainings to providecoaches who were unable to attend the first training with the same knowledge and resources, and tocreate a space for coaches to ask questions and receive feedback and extra assistance.

We’ve found that compensating coaches fortheir time spent coaching provides them with reassurance that their support is valued. This helps tocreate more sustainable teams.

As webecame self-sufficient, we looked outward to help support our community.

Direct technical support is rarely enough to ensure the sustainability of a team. As we know,public school teachers are often overworked and underpaid.

In the past two years, we have hired two full-time employees toaccomplish tasks we cannot. While our students volunteer, mentor & assist teams, apply for grants, andrun events & coach trainings, our staff complete other essential tasks like opening bank accounts andtaking daytime meetings

However, coordinating teams and events on a large scale in a city of over 124K students is impossiblefor high school students alone

As webecame self-sufficient, we looked outward to help support our community. Since 2013, our support hasgone from $321 microgrants for a handful of teams, to running a full-fledged non-profit with a yearlybudget of $500K, and distributing grants of up to $2K each to 128 teams across the city. Our non-profit,the Philadelphia Robotics Coalition, is our brand of outreach

We were affected by this inconsistency and worked to acquire multiple streams of funding.

Historically, STEM opportunities and programs have had high participation costs, makingthem inaccessible to the vast majority of Philadelphia students. For many years, the School District ofPhiladelphia (SDP) was the sole provider of funding for robotics teams. Once that funding ended, manyteams were unable to sustain themselves, and ultimately disbanded.

Our team strives to break down those barriers and ensure STEM programs are