Hope you had  a good summer break. Here's a last update as the team competed in the Asia Pacific Open Challenge of the First Lego League Challenge in Sydney.

If you'd like to read a longer version, you can find it here --> on our website. 

Continue to read below, for the summary

The Competition: The event was from July 4 until July 7. With a total of 53 teams from 27 countries that came to the competition, this was an exciting learning experience for them. This was at the next level. Although we didn’t win any prizes at this level, the team made significant progress through this. For example, in the Robot Game competition, at Oslo they had scored 230 out of 550 points. At Scandinavia Finale it was close to 340 and now at APOC edition, they upped it to 440 out of 550 points.

The Learning Experience: They got a wonderful opportunity to compete with several champion teams from across the globe, getting an amazing exposure to the experiences of the different experienced teams. They interacted with teams from several countries (like Australia, Brazil, China, Germany, Hungary, South Africa, Turkey, USA, UK and more). They engaged in several exciting activities that celebrated the culture of inclusion and sharing.

Thank you again! On behalf of the kids and as coaches, we would like to express our gratitude for your help. Your support turned this opportunity from a dream into reality. We journaled the days of the event on the art.in.smart instagram channel.

Next edition: As we settle down into the closure of this season, FIRST and Lego Education have already announced the theme for the next edition of FLL Challenge - promoting STEM education amongst youngsters, combined with an awareness of other important topics. The next edition is named the SUBMERGED challenge, launching August 6, 2024. Click here to know more (or see this REVEAL video from FLL here).

We will start to explore building the team for this next edition. Let us know if you’d like to be involved and would want to learn more.

It is competition week now! After quite a hectic round of fundraising we've managed to raise (nearly) all the funds estimated for this journey.

🙏 Special thanks to the generous contributions of several individuals (parents, friends and families), organizations (Asker kommune and Bærum kommune) and companies (boost.ai, Interaxo, Kahoot!, Avo Consulting, Wärtsilä, Xeneta, EIRIK NORMAN AS and ASSA ABLOY Global Solutions).

🇦🇺 Thanks to your support, we've been able to garner enough funds to register to the competition, book our tickets, make arrangements for accommodation and are now down under in Sydney.

💪 The team is hard at work iterating on their project, presentations and robot runs. Despite the academic year being over, they have been at the school every day and every evening working hard chipping away at gains every day!

😬 This is now event week and the team is filled with a combination of nervous anxiety and an extreme amount of excitement for the next days.

Thank you again to each of you for showing the faith and supporting the team from the start.

Yay! We’ve finally crossed 100 000 kroner total on our journey to raising funds. 🚀 🥳  

The journey from Norway to Australia is going to be a long one, if we make it! In order to make this dream turn into a reality, we need to raise a total of about 260 000kr.

We are grateful to all the individuals that have donated generously to the fund 🙏.

We’d also like to thank Tribia, the Mayor of Asker and the Mayor of Bærum for commiting with sponsorship amounts and helping us reach out to more companies. 🙏

We'd also like to thank Asker Næringsforeningen for hosting us and writing up such an exciting article covering our journey. 

While we have had rejections from several companies that have been unable give us financial support, they’ve given us their best wishes and support.

We shall continue to reach out to more companies and individuals, and we try to raise the rest of the funds. And we continue to do bake sales and raffles to keep up the energy!

Thank you again to everyone for the continued support

On behalf of

Team Art In Smart