Special education kids on campus and in the community are getting the chance to build robots at Saturday’s First Tech Challenge “Robo Para-Olympics” from 10 a.m. – 12 p.m. at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on Coit.

“The whole workshop started off with a mom who sent me an email saying that she wanted her don to participate in our robotics team,” FTC sponsor Patricia Flores said. “The mom also mentioned that her son was special ed and he enjoyed building robots.”

The FTC team on campus already has reached its maximum capacity of 15 people and the team has only one robot, prompting Flores to think of other ways to get special needs children involved.

“I thought about this and because we have only one robot so it will be kind of challenging for him to actually build something,” Patricia Flores said. “So at the back of my mind I was thinking about the lack of opportunity for children with special needs. So when I talked to the president of the club he suggested the idea of hosting a monthly workshop and we can teach them.”

The workshop hopes to benefit the team by giving the FTC members an opportunity to reach out into the community.

“This event that we are hosting will expand on what we have been doing in the workshops,” FTC president Ian Flores said. “So just like the workshops the event will give kids and opportunity to interact with the STEM environment and they will learn how to build and operate the robot themselves.”

Student who would like to participate can join this event by signing up, for volunteer hours

“A lot of kids with disabilities don’t get chances to do a lot of things,” freshmen Zoya Farooqui said. “So the workshops are a good way to give those kid a chance to build robots and try something new especially if their interested in that field.”