FIRST Team Paragon 571

Windsor, CT

Community Outreach

Lion’s Club Fair

Our team aids the local Lion’s Club in organizing their two crafts fairs each year. Here we help local vendors setup and dismantle their booths. When the vendors need a bite to eat we grab some food from the snack booth for them.

Windsor Food Bank

The team participated in the Windsor EMS Food Drives, and hold our own food drives on the Windsor Center Town Green.

turkey for 20

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 for our cheers! The children in our community are always amazed by our robot’s abilities and our team.

IMG_2552IMG_2555

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 such as pick up cans, collect bottles, and clean up after the bike-a-thon.

MS Bike-A-ThonIMG_0107-e1454784689851

Otis

Otis Elevator (our main sponsor) has a volleyball tournament every year where Team Paragon sends volunteers to assist with the festivities. Examples of our duties include refereeing the matches and maintaining order. Not only this, but we aid the employees during Otis’s annual “Take your child to work day.” Here we entertain the employees’ children with our robot related activities. These are just a few of the examples of the aid we offer to our sponsors.

IMG_2746

WVA Toy Drive

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

IMG_0588IMG_2749

Jaycees Christmas Tree Sale

At the Christmas Tree Sale, members of our team help people find the right tree for their homes during Christmas. If they need any assistance with loading the tree into their vehicles we can help them with that too.

Library Envelope Stuffing

For the second year, Paragon students and mentors helped out at Windsor Public library’s envelope stuffing event for their fundraising campaign at the Wilson Public Library. Thousands of envelopes were stuffed, snacks were eaten, and everything was wrapped up in record time thanks to the numerous number of volunteers present.  Did you get your Library fundraising letter?  Thanks to all who helped out!

Windsor Elementary Schools

Each week on Friday, a few students are taken 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). Another STEM related activity is the Elementary Science Night where our team displays robots and educates the children and their parents on our STEM related activities.

Windsor High Open House

Every year, Paragon sets up a display at the Windsor High School to inform future students about our team. This usually involves having a few of the old VEX robots running, drive our previous competition, and have several students to talk about what the team does.

IMG_20150914_192026-e1454789146738-1024x6901-e1454789347101[1]

FTC Competition

Recently our FTC team, The Blazing Spirits, team 130, competed in the Windsor, Loomis Qualifying 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, as well as cheering on our friends in their competition.

Turkey and $20

Our team had the opportunity to serve our town by collecting money as well as turkeys for those who are less fortunate and cannot provide a holiday meal.