Robot challenge gets green light from young women

Sunday 11 February is 2024’s International Day of Women and Girls in Science. 2024 is the ninth year of the UN event to promote “full and equal access” to STEM for women. The competition is part of the FIRST Robotics Competition and was won by a team from Malta which developed a robot that removed CO2 from the air using enhanced weather.

The European challenge was held in Brussels and attracted 270 school-aged girls making up 90 teams from 19 countries. The winning team was entered into the FIRST Tech Challenge Benelux Scrimmage which will take place later this month.

The challenge was funded by Arrow Electronics, with Girls Go Circular’s Women and Girls in STEM Forum. “We believe these learning opportunities play a critical role in cultivating female STEM leaders in the communities we serve,” said Christina Frantz, director of corporate affairs of Arrow.

FIRST Robotics is an Arrow STEM partner. It hosts international engineering events, challenging teams to build and program industrial-size robots.

The Women and Girls in STEM Forum gathered over 1,200 policymakers, industry leaders, students, and educators together to champion gender equality in STEM and information and communications technology (ICT).

Girls Go Circular is an EU-funded education programme for girls aged 14-19 which provides digital and entrepreneurial skills through an online learning platform on the circular economy. It aims to encourage young girls to embrace STEM and ICT studies and careers and close the gender gap in these sectors. It contributes to gender equality policy objectives, specifically the Digital Education Action Plan 2021-2027 (Action 13) and the New European Innovation Agenda.