Organizations JLS® Supports - Young Thinkers of York

Young Thinkers of York is a  nonprofit youth organization that offers opportunities and motivates kids to overcome obstacles standing between themselves and success. Using education and exposure to STEM experiences, Young Thinkers programs will expand our young people’s minds, giving them the ability to follow their dreams.

Robothinkers is a youth robotics program participating in an international program called FIRST Lego League, a STEM program for youth ages 9-14. This free after-school program is the only city-wide competitive FIRST Lego League team in York City. Throughout the “season”, the Robothinkers have the opportunity to compete in three scrimmages and one regional tournament.

The Robothinkers embrace all eight of the FIRST Lego core values, making teamwork fun, displaying friendly competition, and showing respect to the other team members, coaches, mentors, and other competing teams. Each year FIRST Lego introduces a new theme relating to the project challenge. This project will allow Robothinkers to brainstorm on what a solution would be to a real-world problem. Through learning about the topic and discovering the problem, the teams will collaborate on a new solution or simply modify the existing one.

Every challenge announcement includes the release of the new field missions as well as the playing mat. Using engineering and math concepts to design, build and program an autonomous robot to score points with by completing missions on the playing mat. Missions requiring the robot to navigate around the mat, collecting, delivering or causing something to happen, scoring as many points as possible within the match time frame.

Back in February, the Robothinkers came to visit JLS^®! Lead Engineer Nate Oatman gave the kids a tour around the shop, and the kids brought us their robot, completing a few challenges for us!

For more information about Robothinkers and Young Thinkers of York, check out their website https://www.youngthinkersofyork.org/