What is FIRST?

Founded in the year of 1989 with the goal of educating the scientific and technological fields among young peoples, the FIRST program had evolved into a amazing and globally minded program. The objective was, and remains today, to stimulate scientific creativity in the minds of young people all over the world and to help them to learn more about the STEM fields, subsequently piquing an interest that would reflect itself later career choices. Through the various programs that FIRST has implemented for all ages, from childhood through adolescence, children learn the responsibilities that come with building robots, including financial and technical ones. FIRST also fosters a sense of cooperation within members of a team and within the network of teams themselves; after all, every team involved with FIRST is brought together by a single joy they all share, a passion for creativity and innovation, for realizing plans from pen and paper to reality. FIRST supports students financially by offering over $50 million in scholarships. FIRST also gives a tremendous amount of awards to teams that have demonstrated excellence and shown the principles of FIRST. There are four competition levels for FIRST:

FIRST Lego League Jr.
Targeting towards the young minds of grades K-4, FIRST Lego League Jr. focuses on building a sense of teamwork and helps kids to solve real word scientific challenges using critical thinking and imagination. Students build their models using Lego elements and present what they have learned using posters.
FIRST Lego League
Designed for students in elementary and middle school, they build and program lego based robots in order to provide solutions to real-world engineering problems. This helps them develop critical thinking, and have a good sense of sportsmanship along with learning various presentational skills.
FIRST Tech Challenge
Middle school to High school students are challenged to design, build and program a robot. This allows students develop STEM skills along with realizing the importance of cooperation, innovation and hard work.
FIRST Robotics Competition
Focusing primarily on the STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), FIRST Robotics is targeted at high school age students with the objective of developing interests but also skills in the various STEM fields. Within a six-week time limit, teams build industrial-size robots in order successfully complete their game challenge. This allows for greater comprehension skills, in turn, and adds to the overall value of the FIRST experience.