RoboCompUSA

Update: We have reached out $33000 target. Our stretch goal is a further $3000 for meal costs.

Cooktown State School Robotics Club was founded in 2015 by a diverse group of keen teenagers and adult mentors. The aim of the club is to develop new skills and opportunities in remote Far North Queensland through the use and application of robotics. The fields of engineering, robotics and programming are areas that will be needed in the future. Our members wish to develop their skills further through challenging competition. By doing so, the group must travel great distances to do this.

The competing students attend Cooktown P-12 State School which situated in Cooktown, a community in the Cape York region of Far North Queensland. The group consists of six boys and two girls of secondary school age and a mentor who is a local school teacher. They meet five days a week and give up their own time to learn how to design, develop and test robots. Their creations are built for robotics competitions held around the local region. The aim for this group is to foster greater learning opportunities for young people in remote Far North Queensland. They hope that in the future some of the current and future members will go on to further training in the IT or engineering fields. The ambition is to develop and foster local talent so that the future needs of the community can be met.

The group has provided many volunteer hours supporting other like-minded young people in the region. Some live in even more remote locations. Our group provides their time at camps to give primary school age students an opportunity they would not otherwise have, living in such remote locations. Regional Robotics Camps are organised by the Cairns School of Distance Education. Parents of remote students have praised the Cooktown Robotics Club for their dedication and assistance to remote students who without their support would otherwise miss out on the learning opportunity. The group has helped many young people design and create robots which were not only competitive in regional events but many were winning designs. The local far north chapter of QSITE (Queensland Society for Information Technology in Education) has given glowing praise for the efforts of our group and how selfless they are in helping others to reach their goals in design and competition.

This group of motivated teens are already making an impact in their local community. They were nominated for the Cooktown Australia Day Award for the Arts and Cultural Award in 2016. This alone speaks volumes about community awareness of their achievements. This is a remarkable achievement for a group only formed a year ago. Further to this over the past 12 months, our members have won regional robotics competitions in Far North Queensland.

The group is now set to tackle a greater challenge by competing in Robogames 2017. This is a competition held in the USA each year and is open to a variety of ability groups and includes events tailored to school age competitors. The club will compete in this three day event in multiple challenges. Once competition is over, the study tour will provide students the opportunity to visit local universities and possibly visit the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Los Angeles. The group will also immerse themselves in the American culture and the ‘dream factory’ which is synonymous with the west coast of the USA. The opportunity provides these students with experiences to broaden their own analyses of future possibilities the wider world can offer them and contribute greatly to their vision of becoming global citizens.

This trip of course does have a cost, it takes time and effort to make all the logistics of sending a group of 10 in total to the USA - but we are up for the challenge. The club is fundraising through many different events throughout this campaign. Our members are endeavouring to fundraise to help reduce the overall costs of our dream to compete against some of the best young minds in the world. Our budget is estimated at $3300 per person for 13 days in the USA. This would include travel, accommodation, food and entries into the competition. In total, the group would like to fundraise $33000. We hope you will consider us for a donation. Fundraising outside of this website campaign has already hit $6000 thanks to donations from local politicians, James Cook University and the local RSL club.