The Gadget Girls team are competing in this year’s KIBO Robot Programming Challenge (RPC). Most of their team have been able to travel to north-west Sydney to participate in the KIBO RPC Training and Support Program offered by One Giant Leap Australia Foundation (OGLAF). The program has been organised by OGLAF to help address gaps in knowledge and experience identified amongst many of the challenge participants, especially as the teams have been facing extra challenges due to COVID-19 restrictions and a later start to the challenge than originally planned. OGLAF believe that this challenge is such a valuable learning experience, that they wanted to encourage teams to continue in the competition despite the challenges. All the Australian teams were invited to participate in the training and support program, with several other teams attending remotely as they were unable to attend in person.
On Monday morning the Gadget Girls were interviewed by communicator and storyteller Michael Daroven, for a podcast he is developing. This was a great opportunity for the kids to express themselves and gain confidence in speaking in this kind of format. They were able to explain to Michael their reasons for forming the Gadget Girls: to challenge themselves and learn new skills, to break down stereotypes surrounding coding and robotics and to prove girls can do whatever they put their mind to.
Half of the Gadget Girls team are also One Giant Leap Australia Foundation student ambassadors so are also participating in ‘The Gathering’, which is the latest event for the Future Leaders Program, and running this whole week at One Giant Leap Australia Foundation Headquarters.
In the lead up to these two events, OGLAF student ambassador and Gadget Girls team member Shalin said “I am extremely excited to meet the ambassadors and the Gadget Girls team after ages in lockdown! We have come so far as a team and worked together beautifully to finish the coding segment of the challenge despite the distance. The GoFundMe campaign has been extremely successful that we even got shirts customised for our Gadget Girls team. A hearty thank you to Jackie for this amazing opportunity and thank you to the girls for working together amazingly!”
Read more about the KIBO RPC here: https://kiboaustralia.com.au/
A video of the Gadget Girls speaking about their team and the KIBO RPC can be seen here:
