3, 2, 1…. Radio silence is over!
We’ve been a ‘little’ MIA from social media this past month. We do apologize but we needed time. Time to process what the pandemic’s impacts were on personal, community, and global levels. But rest assured, our absence from social media did not translate into an absence from our team and our community. We, like all students around the globe in and outside of FIRST, are grieving the moments we did not get to experience but were so looking forward to. Our plans for the rest of Infinite Recharge were dramatically altered the week of March 9th. Competitions were cancelled, schools started closing, fundraising events cancelled, and how we interacted with each other on a daily basis changed. We took a few days to process all of the information that was coming at us at warp speed on the pandemic and how we would continue to attend school.
While that less than fortnight period seemed like years at times because we missed our friends and the creative camaraderie in the shop and at other times, it seemed to blow by quickly with all of the changes going on in our lives, we knew we needed to be there for each other and our community.
At our first Zoom meeting less than 2 weeks after our season plans were derailed, we established new plans on how we could help each other and our community. Our mentors asked us what we wanted to do for the remainder of the season. Our answer was solid. We wanted to continue to meet on a regular basis and we wanted to find ways to help our community. We poured out a list and then quickly divided up tasks and assigned student leads. It appears all of our robotics training is quite useful outside of robotics.
Attention universities and businesses, robotics students are creative problem solvers that are always thinking how they can contribute to society.
So, in the month since our first Zoom meeting, we have been heavily involved in our community. We have collected and delivered much needed food and household items to the Purple Pantry, a food pantry/resource center on ECU’s campus supporting their students. “Pirates helping Pirates!” We have also donated money to the Food Bank of Greenville to provide 4,000 meals to Pitt County residents. Several students dusted off sewing machines, taught themselves how to sew, and started making masks. To date, we have donated 100 masks to Vidant Medical and over 40 to people within our community needing them. We have also 3D printed mask straps for healthcare workers in need of some relief for their ears from wearing masks full time now. To get the message out about staying safe, we created a Coronavirus Safety video in accordance with the CDC guidelines. It was a great project to work on collaboratively while remote.
One would have thought that was a long enough list, not the Pirates. We are also tutoring area middle schoolers in Math via Zoom, working with ECU on designing and building a prototype for a low cost functional ventilator, posting signs within our community with words of thanks and encouragement to everyone keeping us safe and providing essential services, and providing our STEM Treasure Kits to pediatric patients.
We, being the Pirates that we are, are using our creativity and passion to make the most of the situation and giving our community and each other the support we all need. While the story of how our season would go wasn’t penned much by us, the final chapter and ending are within our power to write. Stay tuned as we continue to navigate our ship through the storms and doldrums to find ways to make a difference!