Robogals is an international student-run organisation that aims to inspire, engage and empower young women to consider studying engineering and related fields. Its primary activity is interactive, engineering based workshops for girls aged between 8-18 (depending on location). Robogals has chapters at 31 universities across Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, Japan, Kenya, South Africa, New Zealand, Indonesia and the Philippines. These chapters fall into three regions - Robogals Asia Pacific, Robogals EMEA (Europe, Middle East, & Africa), and Robogals North America.
Robogals also run a range of other activities around this central theme. Past events have included a robotics competition (2008), a mass robot dance that attracted significant media coverage (2009), a robot artwork exhibition, science fair (2010), the Robogals Science Challenge (2012-), and the Robogals Challenge in the UK (2015-).
The organisation is predominately run by university student volunteers, including at the global headquarters in Melbourne, Australia with the Leadership Team of Robogals based around the world.
Robogals' achievements have been recognised on an international level with the awarding of an Anita Borg Change Agent Award by the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology. Robogals founder Marita Cheng was named the 2012 Young Australian of the Year.
History
Robogals was founded as a student club at the University of Melbourne in July 2008 by mechatronics engineering undergraduate student Marita Cheng, together with software engineering student Mark Parncutt and three other engineering and science students, Kelly Chiu, Ann Chee Lim and Vi Vu. The idea initially came from efforts by one of Cheng's professors, Jamie Evans, to teach robotics at Lauriston Girls' School as a way to encourage more girls to study engineering.
Following its initial successes in Melbourne, the organisation was expanded throughout Australia in 2009 by inviting female engineering students from four more universities around Australia to a three-day "Bootcamp" at the University of Melbourne where they learned how to run a Robogals chapter back at their home university. It is also helpful if the students have support from their faculty for establishing a Robogals chapter on their campus. This process has been repeated several times since then Robogals has expanded to 31 universities worldwide as of 2015.
Activities
Engineering workshops
Robogals' primary activity is running engineering based workshops, either in schools or by having the schools visit the uni; the workshops are aim to inspire gender diversity in engineering by engaging girls and guys in a range engineering topics. These topics are selected by the volunteers running the sessions to reflect their own interest in the field. Robogals volunteers are university students, including male and female, who teach school girls the basics of engineering; an example of this is through the use of robotics and programming using LEGO Mindstorms EV3 and NXT kits. Lessons can range between 1 hour to a full day and can consist of multiple types of workshops.the robot to move, use the sensors and perform specific tasks.
The workshops are run by the local university chapter, which liaises with schools to arrange visits, and arranges for trained volunteers to run the workshops.
Community events
Robogals Melbourne held a Science and Engineering Expo in August 2010, partnered with National Science Week, attended by girls schools and a few individual families. In 2010, Robogals Perth went on an excursion to Kalgoorlie to demonstrate to school students as part of the seventh annual Science Awareness Festival by Scitech. In March 2011, Robogals London had a stall at the Big Bang Fair.
In 2009, Robogals' Guinness World Record attempt for the 'largest robot dance' received coverage on national television. Over 300 dancers/students turned up at the event on 29 September 2009 at the University of Melbourne.
The Robots Are Coming was an exhibition built by art and design students, held from 6–11 September 2010 of 5 life-size robots at a transportation hub in central Sydney. The event functioned as street art, inviting pedestrians to reflect on 'the impact of technology in today's society'. Over hundreds of thousands of pedestrians had lunch alongside the robots, or stopped to admire them.