Special Olympics & Empire Code Event:

 

The Special Olympics and Empire Code Event was an event that our team had been invited to volunteer at and provide assistance to the Olympians while they coded and programmed to prepare an anti-bullying app’s user interface and design. Its aim was to teach challenged students from across the Asia-Pacific continent the importance and joy of coding and programming, to create a vibrant future for them. When first offered the chance, we knew little about the event or its procedure. 

Thus, we had remained in school the same Monday to prepare ourselves for the Special Olympics Event. With training provided by the organiser, Alicia and a robotics and outreach specialist from Singapore American School, Shuvan, two hours spent in our campus allowed us to gain the necessary knowledge of the app creating a website, Thunkable, and the working of the event we were to attend the following day. 

We had been invited to be volunteers to boost our contacts and aid our outreach, to the Special Olympics at Park Royal, Beach Road, a lovely hotel with a Christmas theme and heavenly spread to welcome all participants and associates. Our missing out on school hours was certainly not wasted - our primary aim outside of robotics- food, had been fulfilled! 

From 1 - 3:30 p.m. on Tuesday, the 3rd of the final month, near our entire team force assisted the young participants of the Special Olympics, most foreigners from across the Asia-Pacific region, making an impression of both the amiability of the local Singaporeans as well as the thrill of working on the interface of an anti-bullying app. Our presence there was invaluable- we built good contacts with the organisers and several STEM-intrigued children, we aided the special Olympians on their path to becoming robotics experts, and marked the beginnings of our outreach experiences as a team. 

The benefits of this event were from as minor as commemorative stickers and empire code t-shirts too as major as an insider view of large-scale STEM events, particularly in the programming and technological fields. Much like our kickoff, our first taste of these events has successfully paved a way for us to expand our contacts and understanding of an incredible amount of STEM and FIRST-related fields.