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Alpena Robotics Teams Wrapped Up The Holiday

 

The Alpena High School robotics team was wrapping presents at the Rusty Petunia in Downtown Alpena for a fundraiser. Alpena High School Robotics Team Member, Tyler Stepaniak, said this about the fundraiser: “We’re wrapping for funds right now because it’s very expensive to run a robotics team, and we figured this is one good way to get in a fundraiser.” He continued, saying, “As well as reach out to the community and show that we’re here because one of our main things is trying to spread STEM through our community.”

Alpena High School Robotics Team Member, Tyler Stepaniak

The fundraiser was to raise money for the robotics teams up coming season, by people leaving tips for each of the gifts wrapped. Any gift was accepted to get wrapped, even if they were bought at another store. Stepaniak said this about helping out the local community with the fundraiser, “It feels really nice to help out that little bit, because we a lot of people are really busy during the holiday time. A lot of people work, I mean, pretty much everybody works, and it’s really helpful and it makes us feel good that we can wrap a gift and help people ease their holiday anxiety and just sit down and enjoy Christmas.”

As the robotics team uses the fundraiser to bring in money for the team and spread holiday cheer, they are also trying to cast a wide net to get more people interested in stem and the robotics team itself. Stepaniak had this to say about the team spreading STEM, “It’s really enjoyable and it’s also a challenge at the same time, because you have to figure out which age group to reach out to, because you think about it and you want more kids on the team. So you wanna reach out to the Junior High, but then you’re only reaching out ito the Junior High, and then we have to try to think how far I want to reach to.” He added, “So like this year, we went to All Saints elementary school and we decided to help with their first tech challenge and present our robot and what we do as a team, as it is really enjoyable when you’re watching all the elementary kids’ faces light up when they see the robot start moving or it shoots a ball at the basketball hoop, or something like that.”