This is a comprehensive guide to how to run and participate in outreach that will continually be updated as more events and information is created/found. 

Girls of Steel is a 7th-12th grade program based out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We were founded in order to create a more inclusive pathway for girls into STEM. We have been recognized at FIRST competitions every year since our founding and won numerous awards, including being finalists at the world championships in 2021! 

Since our founding as an FRC team in 2010, our impact has only grown every year. We’re now about a dozen teams across three programs. Community outreach is a major focus of Girls of Steel and over 15 years we’ve learned a thing or two about running outreach. Today, our outreach is divided into a few major types of events: those within our programs, one day events we run through various community organizations or schools in our area, and multi-day programs that we host such as summer camps. From March 2020 to March 2022 almost 100% of our outreach was hosted virtually. Despite that, we reached over 1300 people and would like to share our expertise with you.

Every single member of our 7th-12th program participates in and organizes outreach. This catalog was originally created as a way to give our own members tools to help in this process. After seeing how much it helped our members we decided to adapt it for the rest of the FIRST community. 

You can access the catalog here:  https://bit.ly/FIRSTOutreach

Building a Pipeline for Girls in FRC

Since our team creation, the Girls of Steel FIRST robotics competition team has created a pipeline for girls through all of our programs. Through this pipeline, we encourage girls to explore STEM at an early age before there is time for traditional stereotypes to set in and influence them. The many inputs to our pipeline include outreach events, university outreach, the chassis project, and our biggest contributor- our FLL teams, including both FLL Challenge and FLL Explore.