Supporting STEM access throughout Eastern North Carolina and beyond

Program: FIRST^® Robotics Competition   

Location: Pitt County, Eastern North Carolina, United States  

We support access to STEM education for all populations in Eastern North Carolina and beyond through engineering sessions and FIRST^® camps at a local elementary school for underrepresented boys, the Greenville branch of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, and several Pitt County Boys & Girls Clubs locations. We also support girls in STEM through our Get the GIST (Girls In Science and Technology) sessions, where we partner with Eastern Carolina University’s Society of Women Engineers Chapter, our local National Society of Black Engineers Chapter, and host Girl Scout Innovation events for local Girl Scouts to earn STEM badges. Our newest initiatives, The STEM Maker Carts, designed and created by students has allowed us to provide hands-on STEM activities to kids at our supporting locations such as the Boys and Girls Clubs especially during the time of COVID when we couldn't do traditional STEM outreach due to restriction protocols. 

Our passion for community is strong and we participate in philanthropic fundraising and awareness-raising activities for numerous causes. We embrace the core values of FIRST at all our outreach events by emulating Gracious Professionalism^® and Coopertition^® in our FIRST camps and Girl Scout events. We encourage our female participants to become key leaders in all areas of the team and embrace the student-led initiatives in our community. We understand everyone's differences and we see these as a strength.

We are building strong partnerships with our supporters, schools, and community, allowing us to improve initiatives, give back, and further use our abilities to be forces for change. The work of a Pitt Pirate is never complete and there are always new opportunities in our community and old projects that can always be improved to better assist the future generations of STEM leaders.