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FIRST® is committed to STEM for Everyone™
FIRST® is a global robotics community that prepares young people for the future, and key to our strategic intent is to serve every student, everywhere. This commitment includes promoting and engaging in initiatives that ensure a welcoming community for all participants, including students, adult mentors, coaches, and volunteers.
STEM For Everyone Resources
STEM Engagement builds confidence in young people and opens doors to all kinds of career opportunities.
Initiatives & Grants
Our initiatives help ensure opportunities for any young person who participates in FIRST programs.
Optional Trainings & Resources
We have partnered with leading organizations to create optional trainings and resources.
FIRST Impact
FIRST programs deliver hands-on STEM experiences that shape confident, capable students ready for college, careers, and life. See how the data backs it up.
STEM for Everyone™
FIRST® Initiatives and Grants
A vital part of our strategic intent is to serve all members of our global community. FIRST® actively engages in developing strategies, collaborations, grants, and initiatives that ensure opportunities for any young person who participates in our programs.STEM Community Innovation Grant
The STEM Community Innovation grants support communities to help them develop new FIRST teams.
FIRST launched its STEM Community Innovation Grants program in 2016 to provide students across the globe with hands-on learning and creative problem-solving opportunities. From 2016-2022, grants ranged from $5,000 to $50,000, with an average of $45,000. In 2023, grants increased to an award range of $30,000 to $70,000, with an average of $58,000. To date, FIRST has awarded 83 grants totaling $3 million to grantees around the world.
Team Support and Training Grants
We have supported school districts by providing small grants for establishing and expanding their FIRST programs.
These small grants were used to directly support teams through registration fees, robot kits, project materials, and transportation for team meetings and events. They were also used to support teams through regional coach and mentor trainings.
The grant application is not open at this time.
Youth Advisory Council
The FIRST Youth Advisory Council (YAC) was established in December 2018.
The Youth Advisory Council developed outreach initiatives. The committee was designed to uplift youth leadership and youth voice at FIRST. The YAC played an instrumental role in creating a STEM for Everyone Youth Training that consists of an animated video and three youth-training modules. The last cohort of members served through June 2022.
Girls in STEM
At FIRST, we actively develop ways to address overall access issues and barriers, particularly in managing and allocating resources, programs, and educational opportunities for girls.
We are committed to creating a unified community for all participants. Girls and women play a critical role in the advancement of STEM – but a significant gender gap remains within STEM careers. This initiative focuses on the participation and advancement of girls and women in STEM without being exclusionary of the contributions of boys, men, and those who may identify differently. To enhance girls’ contributions, and those of other participant youth in STEM, we must support all students throughout their participation in FIRST programs and experiences on teams.
Persons with Disabilities
As part of our commitment to removing barriers to access and participation so any student, anywhere can participate, we have partnered with Kids Included Together (KIT) to better understand the needs of persons with disabilities when participating in FIRST programs.
FIRST is committed to ensuring coaches, mentors, volunteers, students, and parents all have access to resources that provide a better understanding of challenges and needs for students with disabilities and ways to create a more welcoming and inclusive team environment.
Project THRIVE Partnership
We partnered with the Human Rights Campaign’s Project THRIVE to reinforce our commitment to STEM for Everyone at FIRST and the importance of allyship to support LGBTQ+ colleagues, mentors, volunteers, and student participants, and to celebrate our differences.
Our commitment to STEM for Everyone is to ensure all members of the FIRST community feel a sense of belonging. Achieving this means our organization must be supportive and vocal about welcoming all people in the FIRST community and using our platform to raise awareness and highlight voices.
As a youth-serving organization, our commitment to STEM for Everyone is in service of helping all young people find belonging and thrive as part of our robotics teams and community. In June 2021, FIRST joined Project THRIVE, a multi-year, collaborative effort of many national organizations led by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation to create support systems and communities for LGBTQ youth. Each supporting organization is committed to identifying opportunities within their own sphere of influence to increase awareness about and provide resources to address the unmet needs of LGBTQ youth and to highlight best practices and success stories from our respective fields. Project THRIVE will build the skills and capacities of all youth-serving professionals to better meet the needs of LGBTQ young people.