Collins Aerospace, an RTX business, has pre approved the Ribbots, First Lego League, to receive a $3,000 charitable contribution in 2024 (pending successful completion of grant application and review of program proposal). This aligns with their Lifelong Learning initiative.
Ribbots (team #55952) is an independent, non-profit (via our fiscal sponsors Hack Club) FIRST Lego League Challenge Team from Cottage Grove, MN. We are in our 2nd year as a team. The team is composed of middle school students in 4th-8th grade. Currently the team has 6 students (4 females, 2 males) and 2 volunteer coaches. The team initially was founded at Gethsemane Lutheran School. When the school closed in 2023, the team decided to stick together and continue as an independent team. Each season as team members age out, new members are recruited from the local community to come join and participate with our team. Each season, the team takes part in outreach to better our community and help share our love of STEAM with other students.
This funding project is for providing financial support for the 2024-2025 Submerged Season for our team. The funds would be used for purchasing robotic equipment and parts, supplies associated with competition materials, competition fees, recruitment of new team members, and materials needed for the innovation project and team building activities. A typical season can cost between $5,000-$12,000 depending on the competitions the team qualifies for and take part in.
FIRST® LEGO® League Challenge is a global STEM program for teams of young students, to encourage an interest in real world themes and develop key skills that are crucial for their future careers. The students work together to explore a given topic for an innovation project and to design, build and program an autonomous LEGO® robot to solve a series of missions. We're showing students how these subjects can be fun, creative and have practical applications which help solve real world problems. FIRST embraces core values which are the cornerstones of the program and encourages participants to learn that friendly competition and mutual gain are not separate goals, and that helping one another is the foundation of teamwork.
