Globally, less than 2% of all FIRST teams are all-girl, and G-Force Robotics is the first new all-girl team in the state of North Carolina in 10 years. They formed in April 2022, but they are already making a large impact in their community through STEM outreach events and volunteer work!
The team’s main initiative is G-Force Girls SOAR: Success through Outreach, Advocacy and Robotics. Through this initiative they target STEM outreach to elementary, middle school and high school girls. For elementary girls they started their “Be That Engineer” Literacy Project in which they select age-appropriate books from the SWENext Book List to donate to local libraries and elementary schools. They have also partnered with female engineers at Lockheed Martin, Caterpillar and Collins Aerospace to sign notes of encouragement to young readers about pursuing STEM education and careers.
At the middle school level, the club teaches free, short courses in technology as part of their Girls Teach Tech program with their partner ORCSGirls.org. They focus on tech classes that also support robotics, such as 3D printing, coding and game design. They also hosted their first Women in STEM Luncheon earlier this summer to introduce high school girls to female STEM professionals. For their first event they had women working in engineering, defense, aviation, forensics, computer science and public safety talk with a packed house of interested young women.
The team and club believe in community service and volunteerism, and in August they put their tool and engineering knowledge to work by building a disability ramp for an elderly couple who served in the U.S. Army in the 1960s. Since April 2022, this group of SWENexters has accumulated more than 800 hours of volunteer service, along with building a robot for an off-season, all-girl competition in October.
They want to engage more SWENext Clubs to join them in their “Be That Engineer” Literacy Project and encourage you to reach out to them at gforce.frcrobotics@gmail.com or check out their website at gforcerobotics.com.
