Outreach

Bootcamp is an annual week-long training camp that introduces prospective students to the team. During the camp, students attend various workshops, learning the basics of CAD, electronics, programming and business. Current members lead these workshops, which helps them grow leadership experience.

YWES is an annual event organized by senior members of the team, intended to introduce high school girls to careers in STEM. They invite women from various engineering fields to share their experiences and give career advice. This year is the 10th anniversary!

This year, the team organized a toy donation drive. All the proceeds were given back to Sacred Heart Community Center, an organization in our local community that works to provide support to low income families.

The LEAD program educates 7th grade students by exposing them to numerous Robotics-related workshops. It also allows them to obtain a greater insight of Build Season.

Several times a year, the Janksters will demonstrate their robot at various events. These demonstrations often allow the Janksters to promote STEM pathways and to spread awareness about FIRST and other STEM activities for students.

Team 1967 became Bronze Tier Partners with the LGBTQ+ of FIRST organization. LGBTQ+ of FIRST is a student-run initiative that seeks to create safe and educated spaces for LGBTQ+ members of the FIRST community. We host events, give out pins, and create brochures to inform others! To learn more, check out their website here!

Our team partners with FRC 1868’s Menstrual Equity Program as ambassadors to combat inaccessibility to hygiene products. We provided 500+ menstrual products to attendees at the Silicon Valley Regional.

Recently, the Janksters demonstrated our 2024 robot at Sunday Friends. It is an event for underprivileged families to receive educational and financial support. We engaged with numerous families to spread awareness on STEM opportunities, and inspired young students to pursue this field by giving them a firsthand experience of participating in a robotics team.

This year, we re-established our four FIRST Lego League (FLL) teams from St. Lawrence and St. Martin. In addition to this, we started three teams at Holy Family. Our students have spent over 200 hours working directly with the teams to teach engineering, programming, and design concepts, as well as gracious professionalism.

The Janksters’ programming committee collaborated with Girls who Code (a club at Notre Dame) and shared what coding for FRC involves, from the languages they use to the mechanisms they power with controls engineering.

From 2014 to 2019, the team co-hosted FLL tournaments with Intel. During these events, the team shared their experiences and demonstrated our robots to inspire younger students to continue pursuing STEM.

In past years, Janksters would volunteer their time at Toys for Tots. They helped the local community in many ways, such as distributing presents to families in who are unable to afford purchasing gifts.

Ever year, the team organized a Team Social and invite other teams to our school for a night of food, fun, and dancing. It was an excellent opportunity for students to learn about other teams and form new bonds and friendships. We hope to continue this in the future!

Beginning in the summer of 2014, our team demonstrated our robot at Intel’s Bring Your Kid to Work Day. When kids came to see the team, we taught them the basics of driving our robot, how to operate some of its mechanisms, and to understand how it works.

From 2015 to 2019, the Janksters took time to assist, teach, and mentor FLL Teams. We have mentored two FLL teams in the past, 24263 and 32475, and we hope to mentor more!

In 2016, our team volunteered to coach some elementary students from Lowell Elementary. They learned basic 3D printing, wiring, and other aspects of robotics.

From 2016 to 2018, the Janksters invited girls on campus to teach them the basics of engineering, as well as hands-on, engaging activities that developed their STEM skills.

Back in 2013, The Janksters at Notre Dame San Jose helped mentor Notre Dame Belmont’s FTC team, the TigerBots. Our team provided training and material support, and we’re proud of how far they’ve come!