Build the Future Spotlight: Team Buckets

Spouting Social Impact Through a Global Water Initiative

Our team, founded in 2013, was the first in Ravena, New York, and since then, we have worked hard to expand access to STEM education in underserved and overlooked areas in neighboring towns.

In our mission to expand STEM accessibility, we supported our community library by donating materials, time and expertise to help it launch its own FIRST^® LEGO^® League team; we also lobbied our school district to start and fund a FIRST® Tech Challenge team. We have also hosted a “FIRST Robotics Night,” an event we opened to the public to inspire parents and students to join our teams and discover a STEM career.

In 2019, as part of our FIRST LEGO League project, we founded the nonprofit We Give Water in partnership with the UK-based eWaterPay to help address the global problem of clean water accessibility. To date, we’ve raised $55,000 to fund 40 sustainable water systems in The Gambia, which has given clean water access to an estimated 20,000+ people. Several of our team members and coaches are planning to travel to The Gambia in April 2022 to see firsthand the impact of We Give Water and to discover additional ways we can help in the future.