Two KC students, Gouldbourne and Blake were on the Jamaican team competing with their counterparts from over 100 countries at the FIRST Global Challenge (FGC) – www.first.global - at the Arena Ciudad de Mexico in Mexico City in August 2018.
The team included students from Calabar, Immaculate, Jamaica College and Kingston College.
The participation of Team Jamaica Robotics is a project that the Union of Jamaican Alumni Associations
(USA), Inc. (UJAA) has adopted, sponsoring in partnership with the 53 member alumni associations in
the USA. UJAA is responsible for the organization, coordination, project management, and interfacing
with First Global. Additionally, Jamaica’s Ministry of Education, Youth and Information has provided
substantial resources to assist with travel and housing.
Coached by veteran JC Old Boys, the coed team trains at the Robotics lab at Jamaica College. In the
inaugural year last summer in Washington D.C., the team placed 43 rd among over 160 teams.
FIRST Global Challenge is an annual international robotics challenge to ignite a passion for Science,
Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) among the more than two billion youth
across the world. In its second year, FIRST Global has once again invited one team from every nation to participate in an event that builds bridges between high school students with different backgrounds, languages, religions, and customs.