RoboRecovery After-school Robotics Programs

RoboRecovery seeks to make robotics accessible to all New Orleans youth. Our after-school partners receive all equipment, supplies, and assistance with club leadership in one streamlined package. This avoids thousands of dollars in costs while also saving the headaches of initiating and coordinating a new program. Over the past two years, 70% of our after-school program participants have been on free and reduced lunch, and 93% of them identify with ethnicities traditionally underrepresented in STEM (specifically, African-American or Hispanic). We surveyed these students before and after our 6-8 week program to gauge student growth in core areas. We have seen on average a 34% increase in student interest in becoming future engineers, a 12% increase in interest in attending college, a 61% increase in confidence in explaining the engineering design process, an 83% increase in confidence in computer coding abilities, and a 20% increase in students’ reported ability to explain engineering and coding concepts.