The Texpand Robotics team from Cape Town have earned a place at an international championship and they are excited to represent South Africa.
Cape Town, South Africa (23 February 2024) – Texpand have qualified for the International First Tech Challenge (FTC) where they will once again try and win the championship. The team is excited to head overseas and has started raising funds to get everyone overseas and to build their robot.
Last year, the team was crowned the South African FTC robotics champions and travelled to Houston, Texas, to represent South Africa at the World Championships. They became the first African Team to be awarded the prestigious Think Award which recognises excellence in engineering thinking and process. They have the opportunity to once again represent South Africa at the event.
They have compared the FTC championship to that of the Olympics for robotics. It is a prestigious event that helps young minds expand. Not only in the young minds of team members but in the communities of Cape Town, too.
“For Texpand, FTC is more than a game – it is about growing in and expanding STEM skills – Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths. Team members have learnt and applied many concepts from the fields of physics, coding, applied mathematics, 3D design, design process, sensor integration and more. What they have learnt and applied, they have then taken out to teach and share with other emerging STEM teams and under-resourced communities around Cape Town – assisting and training primary school robotics teams in Athlone, running Robotics Activation workshops and drawing new apprentices into our team to develop them into future FTC team members.
Texpand’s mission is not only to represent South Africa on the world stage, but also to inspire and train other young South Africans in the STEM and robotics fields. So far Texpand has impacted over 500 youth through schools and organisations in Cape Town, assisted 35 emerging FTC teams around the world and launched 8 new Robotics teams. They are hungry to have an even greater impact!”
The team are raising funds to purchase the components needed to build their robot as well as cover some of the travel costs to the championship.
“Texpand needs corporate and individual sponsors to partner with them to fulfil their dual mission. Sponsorships will be used to continue hosting the Robotics Activation Workshops, to buy final elements for the robot, and towards travel expenses to enable us to compete at the World Championship. To make all of that a reality we need R400,000.”
The team have already won nine awards to date. They hope this year they get the big one and we can all help them make it happen.
If you would like to support them, you can do so by:
- Pay directly into the Texpand bank account. Texpand is a registered non-profit company.
- Make easy online payments by giving to the BackaBuddy campaign.
- Or, for SA companies, receive an 18A tax certificate for contributions by making payment to FIRST SA – a PBO who runs FTC and will pass all funds on to us (contact us to make that happen)
You can reach out and follow the team’s efforts by checking out the website for more information. For the team, it’s so much more than a robot – take a look why below:
Sources: Texpand
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