Foodshare

Foodshare is a Community based organization that is the heart of greater Hartford’s fight against hunger. They bring together individuals and organizations to create effective solutions to end hunger in all 42 towns of Hartford and Tolland counties. Foodshare does this in three key ways by: 1) Serving as our region’s food bank and distributing more than 15 tons of food each day, 2) Reducing the number of people in need by increasing their self-sufficiency, and 3) Engaging members of the greater community to increase their understanding of these real causes and solutions to hunger.
The team participated in the annual Turkey and a Twenty Drive. The students coordinated and carried out a turkey drive with the goal of collecting 20 turkeys and 20 $20 dollars. Team Paragon far exceeded their expectation and raised 21 turkeys, ..$21 and ..pounds of food. Team members also participated in Foodshare evenings of bread sorting at the Bloomfield site.
The team plans to expand their partnership with Foodshare by participating in Community Gardens which includes tending to one of the two community gardens that Foodshare Sponsors and Produce Sorting which takes place at the regional market in Hartford.

Shad Derby

Each year Paragon presents our team and robots at the Windsor Shad Derby. This is an annual Windsor community event that is a lot of fun. Paragon gets a lot of attention at our robot demos and when we perform our cheers! The children in our community are always amazed by our robot’s abilities and our team.

MS Bike-A-Thon

Team Paragon showed support for another one of our biggest sponsors at the MS Bike-A-Thon. The team went there to help out Griffin Land with whatever they wanted us to do and to pick up cans and bottles for recycling. We also helped clean up after the bike-a-thon.

Otis Volleyball for United Way

Otis Elevator (Our main sponsor) has a volleyball tournament every year during which Team Paragon has volunteers to assist with refereeing the matches as well as keep things running smoothly. This is just one of the things that we do to help out our sponsors.

WVA Toy Drive

Team Paragon also helped the Windsor Volunteer Ambulance around Christmas time. Every year the volunteer ambulance has a toy drive and this year Team Paragon sent some students to help with the collection.

Jaycees

The team does a couple of things with the Jaycees, including assisting with the Horseshoe Tournament and the Jaycee Jog. For the Jaycee Jog, team members were placed along the course, directing joggers as well as letting them know of upcoming track conditions (Like if the trail was rocky farther ahead) and telling them if anyone else was approaching. At the Horseshoe Tournament, team members kept score and helped the Jaycees run the tournament.

FLL in Windsor Elementary Schools

Each week on Friday, a few students are taken after school to one of the four elementary schools in town. While there, they work with younger students to build a Lego robot as well as program it. (Note that this is technically not FIRST Lego League, but we hope to upgrade it to that in the near future).

East Windsor and Enfield Parades

At a couple of parades in East Windsor and Enfield CT, Paragon participated to get our name out in the community. We did this in order to try to entice more members to join our team and to tell more people about what FIRST does.

Windsor High, MLC and Cheney Tech Open Houses

Every year, when the high schools that have students on the team have their open houses for freshmen, Paragon has set up a display. This usually involves having a few of the old VEX robots running as well as several students to talk about what the team does.

FLL Competition

For the past couple years, Paragon has assisted FIRST team 173, RAGE, in running their FIRST Lego League (FLL) Competition. Members from Team Paragon that decide to assist do several jobs, including but not limited to, field reset, judging matches, running the practice tables and assisting with the concessions stand.