Community Outreach

We were invited to the Students Association for STEM Advocacy’s (SASA) annual STEM National Advocacy Conference in Washington DC to talk to our Michigan senators and representatives to talk about STEM supporting bills that we could help push into action.  We joined SASA where they helped us go over and learn who we are meeting with and things to say as well as the talking points to help hone our conversation.  We also got to meet with teams from Michigan and other states and had a few group meetings.  It was so valuable to learn and see our legal system and see how we can make an impact in our country and state.    

Tim Walberg is a Congressman of the 5th district of southern Michigan and took a interest in our stem hub and wanted to learn more about it.  He came to our hub and took a tour learning about our stem hub and what we do in our robotics team.  One of our teammates showed him our labview code and then we showed him our robot in action.  We drove are robot and told him how our vision works.  After the shooting some shots we let him have a turn driving the robot.  It was also a great way to inform him more about stem in the Albion area.  

In our community, we volunteer at Innovate Albion STEM Saturdays every few months, teaching students about engineering, programming, and robotics. Additionally, we help organize these events. Innovate Albion is a teaching and training center for STEM and robotics. In previous STEM Saturday events, we have had a free building table with some basic building challenges, helped kids Code SPIKE Prime (FLL) robots to complete a maze, helped kids build their electrical circuit and design their bug, had a robot driving demo, and have had CNC and CAD demos. Most kids who attend these events are in elementary school. We want to give students exposure to engineering and programming. Every NERD Spark team member is very dedicated to spreading FIRST and STEM throughout our community. Our next STEM Saturday event is at https://innovatealbion.org/events/stem-saturdays/.

Participating in the Festival of the Forks in Albion was such an amazing experience. It's a fantastic event where our team had the opportunity to connect with the community and our sponsors in a lively and festive atmosphere. One of the highlights was being able to showcase our robot and even let people test drive it on the road.

We also took the opportunity to promote our upcoming movie event scheduled for October 21 at the Bohm Theatre by handing out flyers to attendees. It was a strategic move to get the word out to a diverse audience and generate excitement for the event.

Overall, the day was filled with fun and camaraderie. It was a great way to spend our time, and we're eagerly looking forward to participating in the Festival of the Forks again next year. It's events like these that make us feel even more connected to our community and inspire us to continue our outreach efforts.

We have volunteered at our local foodbank where we packed food in boxes to help feed our local community. We packed 14,580 pounds of food which produced 11,664 meals for families in need. Our team packed 1080 boxes at Gleaners and this was a fantastic way to do our part for our community.  

You get rc cars and learn how to measure parts of the car and use those measurements to modify the cars. Those changes get logged and changes are made to make the car faster and they have competitions. It is a sort of precursor class to robotics and engineering. It is really awesome to see them continue to grow their knowledge from their robotics season.