FIRST Global is an annual international robotics challenge that aims to inspire the youth of the world to pursue STEM education and facilitate learning. Every year, youths from around the world come together in FIRST Global to express their ignited passion for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.
The FIRST Global Robotic Challenge was first established by the inventor and entrepreneur, Dean Kamen, founder of FIRST. The challenge is often mentioned as the high school level robot Olympics, with participation from almost all the nations of the world.
Bangladesh has been participating in the FIRST Global Challenge since its beginning in 2017. Team Bangladesh has been on a journey to the top ranks of the challenge, from ranking in the hundreds to ranking 7th among 190 countries in the 2019 FIRST Global Challenge, which was hosted in Dubai. Every year these STEM lovers of the world are given a challenge that is intended to solve some of the greatest challenges of Earth, including the 14 Grand Challenges for Engineering.
In 2019, the challenge was Ocean Opportunities, to highlight the problems of pollution of the Earth’s oceans. Team Bangladesh came out of the tournament as quarter-finalists. This year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, participants from 174 countries are engaged in several social and technical challenges from their home country.
In this year’s arrangements, Team Bangladesh has maintained a steady 1st ranking for the past 9 weeks as of the 2nd of September 2020. Ranking details for this year’s challenge can be found in the following link https://first.global/cc/.
While the teams have changed throughout the years, it is with the hard work and dedication of previous teams that the new team is able to learn from, grow, and perform better. The outcomes speak for themselves as Team Bangladesh has improved by leaps and bounds in their performance, from 2017 to 2020.
This year, the team is 13 people is very strong. Team Bangladesh is represented by Sujoy, Razeen, Zarif, Shahrear, Abrar, Aymaan, Bianca, Zahraa, Areebah, and Farin with chief mentor Shams Jaber and technical mentor Shoaib Mirza and Fardin Ananta as the assistant mentor.
FIRST Global’s mission is to inspire the youth of the world to engage in STEM learning. It encourages qualities such as teamwork, critical thinking, problem-solving, and excites the children to learn and boosts creativity from a young age. The organization also intends to convince the leaders and governments of the world to adopt STEM education and support them through investing in their youth that will go on to make their marks in the world.
