We take an active role in the FIRST community in many ways. From volunteering at FIRST events to translating the kickoff video for the Israeli FIRST community. We opened the Israeli FIRST unofficial Facebook page, which allows teams to keep in contact, share knowledge, and seek advice from others.

We teach teams CAD and programming, give lectures about electronics, manufacture CNC parts, teach teams how to use a CNC machine, and share the knowledge and experience we gain from our outreach programs with teams nationally and internationally. Our alumni mentors other teams.

We also started the postcard project which we ran between 2016 and 2021, where Israeli FRC teams sent us videos of their team. Those videos were edited into clips and presented in FRC competitions in Israel. This project helped teams share their vision, spirit, and activities and reinforced connections between groups.

We run the GAMLA program with the help of the “LIONS” organization in our city.

It began as weekly pre-FLL meetings with around 10 kids from low socio-economic families. We introduced them to FIRST and the world of technology, believing that would open up a host of new possibilities for their future.

This year, we took GAMLA a step further by getting GAMLA kids more involved in FIRST by including them in our FLL and FLL JR. teams.

Our team organizes and hosts multiple festivals annually since 2013.

The festivals invite young kids and their parents to take part in multiple activities that let them have a small taste of FIRST and its different programs and introduce them to the world of STEM.

In this year’s festival, we hosted 12 different activities! Some of the activities included technology-oriented escape rooms and puzzles, building LEGO robots, and driving our FRC robots, 3D modeling and learning about 3D printing, as well as doing science experiments.

Hundreds of kids and parents attend those festivals, as the number of participants grows, allowing us to expand our reach and make an impact on the lives of more people every single year.

We host seminars in an attempt to reach kids who aren’t in one of our various FLL programs and to offer a more in-depth view of the world of robotics, our team, and its activities.

Meant for young kids, our seminars offer a complete look at what every FRC team does during a season. Over the course of multiple days, our team members teach kids to 3D model, to code, and finally, to build, code and drive their very own Lego robots, all while encouraging them to be creative and independent, while also working as a team.

SABABTA is a program that connects high schoolers with elderly individuals through weekly meetings. We met with them, showed them the 2022 FRC game, and explained various mechanical mechanisms used by teams that year. We experienced with them the joy of creativity and teamwork around technological challenges that stands in the heart of FIRST activities, through planning and building wooden structures together.

We have been collaborating with TNUFA for the past 7 years. TNUFA is an organization for adults with special needs with whom we meet every month. Together we introduce them to STEAM by assisting them in building and programming with Lego and using Tinckercad to teach them how to 3D model. We see the DEEP IMPACT we have on them every meeting when we see how they progress and learn each time. In that way, we learn how we can do more complex designs with them.

In 2021, we initiated a working alliance with the Agahozo-Shalom youth village in Rwanda. The connection started via emails and turned into a series of online meetings where we introduced them to the world of FIRST and FRC, shared with them how to build a robot, and managed a team to encourage them to start on a journey of opening a robotics program in their village. In addition, we have partnered with a school in Zambia in 2022 to which one of our students flew with our FLL kits teaching lessons in STEAM to the kids there and in a village nearby. In 2023, we had the pleasure of hosting a group of German engineering high school teachers in our workshop, explaining to them about FIRST and our team. We have also been able to reach in and IMPACT different communities around the world. We contacted a school in Czechia and have had a series of meetings with them resulting in our hosting them in Israel. We taught them all about FIRST and showed them how our process of designing and building a robot works. They even watched us compete in the 2023 off-season event.

We currently run and mentor three FLL teams and two FLL explore teams in our robotics center. Last year we opened a new FTC team, 23632 “Acid Limes.” With our mentorship, they reached the respectable 8th place in the Israel district. We also run annual festivals, a tradition that has thrived for over a decade. Each year, hundreds of children from across the town gather at our school and workshop, where we introduce them to the exciting world of STEAM. We are thrilled to see the growing number of children participating in our other programs year after year.

The Will To Wheel project, in which volunteers help fix wheelchairs for people in need. Our team meets with Will To Wheel weekly, volunteering to fix wheelchairs. Utilizing our resources, we are also able to model in CAD and manufacture using our CNC machine, 3D printers, and lathe custom parts. In addition to the standard wheelchairs, we were able to fix over 40 electric wheelchairs. Together we face new and advanced technical challenges. We are currently working on a custom electric wheelchair to assist a soldier who lost his eyesight, an arm, as well as both of his legs in combat. Our partnership inflicted such a DEEP IMPACT that we managed to increase the number of chairs fixed by 100%, and many of the wheelchairs we built and repaired were sent to various countries around the world such as Kenya, Ethiopia, Namibia, Egypt, India, Brazil, Niger, Ukraine and more, further deepening and expanding our IMPACT outside of our country.

This year we have come up with a new initiative to create DEEP IMPACT, the HaDreamTech project. By collaborating with our municipality to access schools with a STEAM and robotics-oriented program, we teach lessons in the basics of 3D modeling, electronics, and coding to kids in elementary school. We are currently piloting the program, where members of our team are introducing the kids to the world of STEAM through weekly lessons taught and created by our students. We also teach these lesson plans to teachers to have them review the lessons and give us feedback, as well as use them to teach their students. HaDreamTech is in its experimental stages in which we teach only one class and get feedback from the teachers and students, thereby modifying as we progress. We have already scheduled lessons with 3 more schools, which we will begin after the season.