Preparing to engage in a global cooperition (cooperation + competition) among youths from more than 180 countries in the world is an unforgettable and empowering experience. For the first time since 2019, high school students, mentors, volunteers, and supporters from more than 180 countries will come together face-to-face in the spirit of global purpose, unity, and collaboration.
There is no more appropriate place for this year’s FIRST Global Challenge than Geneva, the “Capital of Peace” where nations gather to solve diplomatic challenges and where scientific innovation flourishes. FIRST Global provides an opportunity for young people across the globe to leverage the power of technology, use their knowledge and abilities, and cooperate to collectively tackle the planet’s most pressing challenges. The event is the culmination of year-long activities centered on student teams who use a standard kit of parts to design and assemble a robot to complete tasks in a themed game. Throughout the competition, they will join forces with other teams’ robots in the spirit of Coopertition® in an “Olympics”-style experience unlike any other.
Close to home, team organizers are working to clean up the clubhouse, recruit, train and select the 2022 team, schedule practices, research, design and build a globally competitive robot solution, while recruiting corporate sponsors to help fund snacks, transportation and competition registration and travel to Switzerland. Although management of the annual event continues to be a huge undertaking, Guyanese youth continue to prove themselves as worthy competitors and global citizens demonstrated by their performance results and acknowledgement by the First Global Leadership team over the past five years of participation.
“Participants will see how they can compete to each provide better solutions, but more importantly, how they can work together. We’re all on the same team. We’re all competing with the same global challenges…,” said FIRST Global Founder and renowned inventor Dean Kamen.
The Geneva event will mark the sixth year for FIRST Global, and its first European event. Prior FIRST Global Challenges were held in Washington, D.C., Mexico City, and Dubai. With a mission to inspire leadership and innovation among the globe’s nearly 2 billion youth through the sport of robotics, FIRST Global believes it is through science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) that the world’s next generation can work together to create a better world for us all.
For more information on tryouts, volunteering or to sponsor Team Guyana 2022, email stemguyana@gmail.com.
