Why We Volunteer

Participating in robotics competitions builds confidence, leadership skills, excitement for STEM, and many other subjects. Because of this, we strive to spread STEM in our local and global community so that every person gets a chance to experience how fun robotics is. Throughout the San Diego region, we reach out to students at schools, science museums, all major STEM fairs, as well as those with special needs and the homeless. In addition, our team members serve as mentors and coaches to younger robotics enthusiasts and their coaches. We successfully groomed over 30 award-winning teams. We also teach summer robotics camps for elementary and middle school students, including those in the under-served community. We have done over 320 outreach events, reaching over 131,000 students and parents.

Upcoming Outreach Events

Republic of Cabo Verde, Africa outreach planning
Monthly SWENext events

2021

Presented our lessons on team organization during Covid-19 at the San Diego Engineering Council, to help other teams work through the pandemic.
Continued to host monthly webinars through our SWENext club, WE STEM, to connect a public audience with female industry professionals, including Northrop Grumman Senior Director, Christy Predaina
Continued international outreach by creating FLL teams in South Asian secondary schools. We are starting teams in Nepal through our FTC captain's established non-profit, Agnite.
Presented our use of systems engineering in Robosub and FTC at INCOSE.
Hosted the annual FLL scrimmage for Meadowbrook Middle School teams online, to help teams adapt to the new competition format.
Tutored refugee students in foundational subjects, online.
Competed in the OpenCV AI competition and won Oak-D cameras to develop a CV library for FIRST
3D printed face shields and donated money for efforts to create masks

2020

Continued mentoring Benin and Paraguay's FIRST Global teams.
Co-hosted an official FTC competition. Hosted and co-hosted 3 other robotics scrimmages.
Partnered with University of San Diego STEAM Academy to teach STEAM , encouraging students by exposing them to all subjects.
Partnered with the Fleet Science Center to create videos for Fleet2Go and FLEETtv.
Collaborated with Porpoise Robotics in developing low cost underwater Remotely Operated Vehicle for STEM education.
Joined forces with Krista Mitra High School in Indonesia to create video tutorials that taught students about engineering concepts that will be applicable to the industries of the future.
Tutored online Math and Physics.
Created video tutorials for our YouTube channel.
Teamed up with Barboza Space Center and Porpoise Robotics to teach STEAM in California and the Republic of Cabo Verde, Africa.

2019

Created a SWENext club to promote STEM learning for girls.
Created a 501(c)(3) non-profit named Advancing Science, Technology, and Art so we can financially support efforts that spread sustainable STEAM education to under-served communities locally and globally.
Co-hosted Benin's first national robotics competition with femCoders, the U.S. Embassy, and Team Spyder.
Co-hosted robotics competition in Paraguay with the National University of Asuncion and Team Spyder.
Participated in FRC Showcase Tijuana, Mexico to promote STEM education.

2018

Continued with FTC and mentored FLL teams.
Hosted a scrimmage for 8 FLL teams and co-hosted 2 other scrimmages.
Continued to support Benin with the help of FRC team Spyder. femCoders expanded their STEM training to 7 more schools. We continued mentoring Benin's FIRST Global team.
Started partnership with San Diego Children Museum to promote STEM.

2017

Continued with FTC and mentored FLL teams. Hosted and co-hosted three robotics scrimmages.
Partnered with FIRST Global to coach team Benin. From team Benin's success we partnered with femCoders and US Embassy to train students in six schools in Benin. Donated 10 robotics kits to kick off the program.
Taught week-long robotics summer camps.
Introduced robotics into CA Summer Games as battle of the minds - built a FRC frisbee shooting robot for the opening ceremony which was held at a sport stadium in front of 10,000+ people.
Supported all major Science Expos and Maker Faires in San Diego.
Started partnership with Autism organization and Fleet Science Center to promote STEM.