About First Global:

The FIRST Global Challenge is a truly international robotics event where students from nearly 160 nations across the world will travel to Washington, D.C. this July to participate in the inaugural game that will be held in different nations each year. Teams are composed of high school students with the goal of increasing their knowledge of STEM so they can become the next generation of scientific leaders who will work together to solve some of the world’s most pressing problems.

Team Lebanon:

The Student Technology Club (STC) was first established in October 2014 at Rafik Hariri University in Lebanon to promote student learning and to provide all members with the opportunity to improve their skills in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) by engaging them in contemporary robotics technologies. We strive to build members who think, create and innovate.

This year's Challenge:

In recognition of the challenge’s importance and applicability to all nations, FIRST Global is taking this most universal of challenges – access to clean water – as the focus for the inaugural FIRST Global robotics game. FIRSTGlobal teams from around the world will come together in a yearly robotics challenge and be inspired to pursue STEM education and careers.

This year’s robotics challenge will reflect how we need to cooperate as a global society to solve the water crisis. Teams representing over a hundred different countries will be organized into two competing alliances, each alliance composed of three national teams that rearrange into different alliances for each match. These alliances are tasked with accomplishing engineering tasks such as the storing of drinkable water, filtering of contaminated water, and procuring of new sources water.

Team Lebanon member, from left, Shadi El-Aridi, Wissam Malaeb and Kareem Kawtharani fix their robot during the FIRST Global Challenge, international annual robotics game on. (Photo by Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)

At a global robotics competition, teens put aside grown-up conflicts to form unlikely alliances

(The Washington Post) As six robots battled it out on the floor of the DAR Constitution Hall’s auditorium during the FIRST Global Challenge competition Tuesday afternoon, a cheer rose above the din of voices echoing across the stands.

“Team Hope! Team Hope! Team Hope!”

The cheering came from a corner of the stadium where a group of boys from Team Lebanon — wearing rainbow clown wigs — stood next to Team Palestine. They, and teams from Libya and Jordan, were lending their voices to support a group of Syrian refugees, known as Team Hope. It was one of many times when teens would spontaneously break out into cheers for competitors.

When they weren’t cheering, hundreds of teens from 157 countries mingled, chatted and leaned in for selfies in the sweltering corridors of the concert hall at the first international Global Challenge competition. In between making final adjustments on their robots, a bonding experience that has become central to this competition, they signed each other’s T-shirts and exchanged pins. If they did not speak the same language, they all understood the thrill, the frustration and the anxiety that comes with competition.

(Read the full story)

With Over 158 nations, 163 teams, Lebanon wins 3rd Place of "The Albert Einstein's Global International Excellence Award".

Go Lebanon...

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