Bucks County Engineering Teacher, Students Team Up With Honduras Teens To Develop Global Robotics Program
BUCKS COUNTY, Pa. (CBS) -- A teacher at a Bucks County vocational school and his students have teamed up with a group of teenagers from a small village in Honduras to develop one of the most successful high school robotics programs in the world. Alan Ostrow, an engineering teacher at Middle Bucks Institute of Technology, in Jamison, has been mentoring the group of teenagers from Honduras for three years with the help of his students.
Students at MBIT and the Instituto Santo Tomas de Aquino in Camasca, Honduras have been building robot prototypes and finalizing the machine which will travel with Team Honduras to Dubai to compete against 170 international teams in the FIRST Global Challenge on Oct. 24.
The unlikely bond between the Pennsylvania public school and group of Honduran teenagers is made possible through and Ohio-based charity, Shoulder to Shoulder.
The Honduran teenagers are from the impoverished village of Camasca where electrical power and water are scarce resources. Most families there survive on less than $2 per day.
Team Honduras has overcome economic challenges and in 2018 they placed 16th in the world.
The teenagers hope to build on their success with help from their Pennsylvania friends.
Ostrow will be traveling to Dubai with Team Honduras to guide them and will be reporting back to his students at MBIT each day of the competition.