My son Addy (who many of you know and/or have met) is in grade 10 at White Oaks Secondary School and has joined the Robotics Club for the second year in a row. This club is actually a high school credit course where they build a single robot to compete internationally against high schools throughout the US and Canada. White Oaks is one of the few schools in Halton that is able to participate in this build anually, and they actually won the competition in 2008!! The competition goes from the kickoff on January 7th where they, along with other competing schools from across North Ameerica , will receive the instructions of what the parameters and requirements are of each robot. From then on it's an intense design/develop/build process (3 day/evenings per week, about 5 hours each day) right up until the actual competition in Rochester New York during the 1st week of March. Right now we are in fundraising mode and training for the new kids on the various pieces of equipment including lathes, cnc machines, welding etc.
The total cost of the build is approximately $31,000, we already have $10,000 committed by some local sponsors so we are in need of reaching the $21,000 shortfall. At SupperWorks we will be providing a fundraising event and ongoing program, so for every order placed $10 will be donated to the build simply by inputting the fundraising code "Robot" at the time of your order.
Currently we are hoping you or someone you know may be able to help us out in a few areas:
1: Mentors for the kids, this would be anyone working in the engineering, programming, fabricating, electronics or really any related field that can donate their time to help coach the kids through the build.
2: We are also looking for donations or sponsors to jointly sponsor the build, doesn't have to be a huge amount money as every little bit helps but we need to cover the $21,000.
3: There will also be a silent auction on December 7th so if you or your company has anything to donate to the auction it would be greatly appreciated. Again Supperworks will be donating a preview party valued at $360 for you and eleven friends!! Any donation for the silent auction would be greatly appreciated.
The direction that most of the sponsors take for this project is not sales driven but more along the lines of encouraging and promoting the development of new talent in a very general engineering/manufacturing capacity, the program is highly acclaimed with graduates (hopefully Addy being one of them in 4 years) being solicited and highly sought after by certain universities and other post secondary institutions. I've been told that some of the actual sponsors go so far as to offer positions to the kids once they graduate university, i.e the proverbial "cream of the crop".
So being a sponsor would be awesome but any other help would be tremendous as well.
Thanks for reading!!
All the best,
Ron and Addy
