Support WRO®

You can help to enable young people to realise their potential

Are you looking to support STEM education, growing the skills pipeline, international development and young people? Are you an educational technology company looking to inspire youth and promote your products? Then WRO® is a great match!

World Robot Olympiad™ (WRO®) is a truly global robotics competition and STEM skills development initiative. Since 2004 we have helped almost one million children around the world, many of which are from low or lower-middle income countries, to grow their science, technology and engineering talent and inspire them toward careers in the tech sector. Today we have around 100,000* young people, supported by tens of thousands of volunteers, across more than 90 countries participating each year.

*2019 pre-pandemic figure

Why we need your help

WRO is an independent, non-profit largely funded through donations, so partnerships with organisations with shared values is vital. As a WRO partner you can help to foster the innovators, engineers and entrepreneurs of tomorrow.

When building a partnership we like to make it a collaborative effort. There are opportunities for you to provide in-kind support; give expertise to guide the programmes; and, source volunteers to help at events or with individual teams. In return we help you fulfil your community and promotional objectives; we can inspire your staff and stakeholders; and, you are recognised as a visionary brand and a potential employer across the WRO family.

Do you want to help us transform the lives of young people around the world? Get in touch!

What we do with your help

We are a lean, high-value organisation where all revenues go straight to maintaining and growing our core programmes through sponsorship or to running projects that increase our reach and accessibility, enhance our programmes and empower our participants, delivery partners and volunteers.

Your contribution to our projects

Projects are development initiatives that require resources above and beyond those required for our core programmes. Our current project portfolio includes:

Our WRO robotics competitions are inspirational and impactful (as proven in different studies). WRO LEARN is an initiative that will complement the competitions. It will become WRO’s training camp for students and their teachers to develop knowledge and skills.

There is a need from schools, teachers, teams and judges to have more information and training materials available to better prepare for participation in our competitions. When successfully implemented, WRO LEARN will increase participation in our competitions and help bridge the gap between education and employability.

With this project, we want to setup the technical platform that is required to host all our educational materials. We will develop new materials and also integrate materials that are developed in other projects and are already available in our community. Once the first content is on the platform, we will start the roll-out in our countries, region by region, and start integrating more content with educational and business partners.

WRO competitions are a challenging and fun way for children and young people to learn about robotics and STEAM. But joining the competitions for the first time can be challenging and daunting, especially for the young. With this project, we want to create & share a bundle of starter & rookie concepts our countries can use to equip and guide young learnes and future WRO teams.

We do not start from scratch in this project as some of our countries already work with similar concepts to attract new WRO teams. But it is more work to understand those concepts, make those available to other countries and add new ideas. In addition, a big part of this project will be guiding our countries on how to use which starter concept in their countries in the best way.

In 2022, WRO had its first official season with our brand-new competition category Future Engineers which focuses on a theme around autonomous driving. The feedback to this challenge is very positive, especially people like the project orientated approach and the fact that students learn very valuable 21st century skills such as problem solving, teamwork and engineering design. At the same time, we noticed, that this category requires more input and guidance from us as an international umbrella organization.

With the learnings of the first competitions, we want to significantly boost and grow the WRO Future Engineers category with the following underlying objects:

  • Educate National Organizers on how to implement this category in their country
  • Develop robotic starter sets in cooperation with education technology suppliers and get those sets out to our community
  • Provide guidance & best practises to teams on how to start with the category
  • Provide information on how to judge this category and start to build an international community with experts around the field of autonomous driving as judges

Get a quick intro into WRO Future Engineers in this video with the facts about the category:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_J15lf6uhwo

During the update of the WRO competition program in 2022, the Future Innovators competition category has been evolved from the WRO Open Category that has been around since 2004. Future Innovators focuses on the innovation and entrepreneurship aspects of robotic prototyping and combines this with the excitement of a robotics competition and a start-up pitch during the competition days. In the last years, relatively more girls participated in this competition category – another reason to focus more on this specific category.

We want to significantly boost and grow the WRO Future Innovators category with the following underlying objectives:

  • Provide guidance & best practises on how to start participating in this competition and develop a robotic prototype with the focus on innovation and entrepreneurship
  • Start an international community of experts in the field of innovation and entrepreneurship that may guide the teams beyond the competition day
  • Develop a robotic starter set that get out to our community
  • Educate National Organizers on how to best implement this category in their country, help them to understand how to reach more girls by growing this category

Get a quick intro into WRO Future Innovators in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tBOA-oNK6M

Financial support for low and lower-middle income countries is essential to ensure that young people have access to opportunities that will enable them to participate in international events. We recognize the challenges faced by National Organizers and young people who are trying to participate in their events, especially in light of the recent pandemic and current financial climate.

The grants will be designed to help with travel, resources, and hosting. Specifically, the grants will assist with travel costs, enabling teams from low and lower-middle income countries to take part in the International Final and Friendship Invitationals. Additionally, the grants will provide resources such as hardware or competition equipment in countries where the cost is prohibitive. Finally, the grants will help National Organizers to host regional or international events, enabling WRO to reach new countries that have never hosted before.

By providing financial support, we will to create a level playing field for young people from all backgrounds to participate in its events, thereby promoting equality and diversity in STEM education.

Despite WRO having achieved impact and success in some African countries, most countries on the continent do not have a WRO competition yet. This is especially prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa. WRO and several existing National Organizers want to establish the programmes in those countries where WRO is not present yet.

Our Irish National Organizer, The Camden Education Trust, has been working on big STEAM projects on the African continent for several years. They have a network of trusted partners in the different countries that is eager to engage in robotics activities. We will work closely together with them to find and support local organizations to become WRO National Organizers.

We will provide buddying, training and support to establish and grow WRO in their country. We will help them by providing access to training and skills development resources for students and educators. To ensure that the competition will be accessible by as many teams as possible we will also help by providing robotics equipment and coding devises.

We also aim to support an African nation to successfully deliver at least one Open Regional Championship or International Final this decade.

Your sponsorship

We need sponsors either at a global level to maintain and grow our worldwide effort; or, at a regional level, where we work with our in-country delivery partners (National Organizers) to initiate, embed and grow WRO programmes in a particular country or a region. Whether global or regional, your support is used to:

  • engage more participants
  • keep participation costs low
  • enhance the effectiveness of our programmes
  • ensure our long-term viability

How to channel your support

Support for WRO can be given through either our umbrella Association or our charitable Foundation.