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 3504 is an FRC team based out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We are run out of the Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute and were founded in order to create a more inclusive pathway for girls into STEM. We have been recognized at FRC competitions every year since our founding and became Chairman’s Finalists at the Detroit World Championships in 2021. 

Since our founding as an FRC team in 2010 our impact has only grown every year. Community outreach is a major focus of 3504 and over 12 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 program pyramid, 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 team 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 in FRC and STEM. 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.