Photo: (l-r) Louis Silva (teacher), Melissa Lizarraga (parent/chaperone), Lia Hunt, Liam Lizarraga, Leandro Avila, Amy Huang, Aurayanna Shepherd, Godfrey Sosa (teacher), Leo Matura (parent/chaperone)
by William Ysaguirre
BELIZE CITY, Mon. Sept. 23, 2024
Belize High School robotics students have once again taken Belizean technological know-how to the world stage to help solve the world’s problems in the First Global Challenge robotics competition being held in Athens, Greece from Thursday through Sunday, September 26-29. This year’s theme is, “Feed the Future,” and challenges the students to find ways to grow nutritious food in a safe and environmentally responsible manner, and to distribute that food equitably to the world’s ever-growing population for a truly sustainable food system.
BHS students Aurayana Shepherd, 16; Lia Hunt, 16; Amy Huang, 15; Leandro Avila, 13; and Liam Lizarraga, 15, departed Belize for Greece on Monday morning, September 23. Their robotics teachers, Godfrey Sosa and Louis Silva, will mentor them as they compete with Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) students from more than 190 countries around the globe. The entire BHS robotics team consists of 20 students, from freshmen and sophomores to juniors and seniors, who helped design, engineer, build and program their robot, “Wagüchi”, which they will program to complete a number of tasks as part of the challenge. The robot’s name is the Garifuna word for “our father”, and is a reference to the inspiration that the team members have drawn from their elders/ancestors. The teams from other countries are larger, but each team may only send five representatives to the competition.
In Greece, the BHS students will partner with other teams to compete as an alliance. Cooperation and networking are the keys to success, and they began this teamwork even before they travelled. The BHS team has been in preliminary virtual meetings with teams from Turkey, Europe, Africa and the Americas, and during those meetings they tried to determine which groups would be the best fit for a collaboration. Their preparation also included a visit to a farm in Cayo to get a firsthand feel for what it means to grow food, and the many challenges farmers face.
The BHS team had previously participated in the First Robotics competition, which was for United States’ schools only, in Tulsa, Oklahoma in April, said BHS principal, Majiba Sharp. The BHS team was the only invited guest from outside the U.S. Previous BHS teams have been quite successful at past First Global Challenge competitions, winning silver in Singapore last year and winning gold in Geneva, Switzerland in 2022. Sharp said she would like to see more schools introduce their students to robotics, and the school has formed a LEGO league to introduce robotics to 5-year-olds, using simple LEGO kits. The Ministry of Education has also previously helped introduce robotics to other high schools, by distributing “Raspberry Pi” kits of a simple micro-computer which could be programmed with other devices to build a robot for a specific purpose.
Getting the BHS team to Greece was also a challenge, but the team was able to make the trip through the full support of Digi; the Belize Tourism Board; the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology; and the Ministry of Sports, for which Sharp expressed her gratitude.
FIRST Global also hopes to draw on Athens’ rich history of international collaboration as the home of the ancient and modern Olympics, as they bring together the world’s brightest young minds, to make science and technology as exciting as any other sport. Their aim is to inspire the world’s two billion young people to work in STEM fields and become the leaders who may collectively solve the Earth’s problems.