Team Elev8 at the FIRST Robotics Competition

We are Team Elev8. We are the first team from our school, and the third from India, to take part in the FIRST Robotics Competition. Our year starts off with weekend training sessions from August to December. As the senior team members graduate, new students from younger grades take their place. The broad tasks are categorized into two main functions- Engineering and Operations. These are further sub divided into construction, electrical, programming, safety and strategy; and marketing, outreach, animation, web designing, social media, sponsorship and finance, respectively. Being a part of both the Engineering and Operations streams, team members develop key skills that they use throughout their life. As a student led, student run organization, we develop leadership, time management, financing and public speaking skills. We have a common passion, a common dream, and we realize it every day as ambassadors of FIRST in India. Nehru Science Centre, a Government body and the largest interactive science centre in India, invited us to display our robot on the National Science Day. This event was attended by students from over 70 schools across Mumbai. In the past year, we've completed 2000+ hours of community service through teaching elementary school teams, running robotics events, teaching Math and science in schools for the underprivileged. We have started 2 FLL teams of hearing impaired students that we fully sponsored to take part in FLL competitions. One of these teams won the best project award for their innovative idea at the FLL regionals and reached the FLL nationals this year. Thas been an adventure that most of us ventured upon, knowing almost nothing. We've come a long way from when we began. Our hope is to constantly improve, expand the team and elevate the quality of the FRC experience for the students of this school!

– Aarushi Mazumder