By Oygar Erdal,

It’s rare to be super excited on an early-risen Sunday morning, especially if the wee hours were spent on a plane. As we approached Gaziantep Airport, I couldn’t wait to join our team, OrtaBot, at the 9th tournament of First Lego League.

Organized by Bilim Kahramanlari (Science Heroes), First Lego League took place in Gaziantep, with the theme “Young Solutions for the Aging Population”. Every year the event focuses on a theme that brings a solution to a certain problem (the previous year’s being “Food Factor”) with real-life projects and the designing/programming of a Lego Mindstorms robot.

We arrived at the modern school complex where children, coaches, parents, volunteers and organizers were buzzing around with excitement and smiles on their faces. As a side-note, everyone including the Bilim Kahramanlari team are volunteers. It’s a non-profit event with amazing outputs. We found our way to the gym to find most of the kids fixated around the ping-pong tables, test-driving their robots, looking for parts to modify and tweaking software – all totally immersed in their adventure.

The event consists of two main parts. In the first part, teams create a real-life project in which they help the elderly in their wide-range of needs. Our team had picked “loneliness” a common problem amongst the elderly. Their proposal was to create a recreational center for the elderly, where they could be involved in a wide range of activities from gardening to learning handicrafts, and as a result socializing and making good use of their time. With a capacity of five hundred, the center aimed to sustain itself through government support, donations, and selling its produce. Unlike a nursing home, the center is only available for daily usage, where the elderly could take a break from their usual routine and environment to interact with each other and create.

I have to admit this would be a big project even for an architecture student, but our team pulled it off amazingly well. They had prepared their presentation as a reenactment where an old lady and her daughter come to this center to get information. With their lovely acting skills and well-researched presentation they described all aspects of their project to the tournament judges.

The other half of the tournament is designing and programming a Lego robot, which achieves certain goals on an obstacle course. In every run the robots buzz, click, and move to their destination. Each team’s robot has a different workflow and design. As the tournament schedule rolls, every team competes with another on identical courses trying to accomplish as many goals as they can in two minutes. When they are not competing, the development teams rush to the gym to tweak their bots so that they can do various tasks better: Pick a lego chair up and place it correctly aside the table; turn the dial on the Lego stove off, etc, all actions programmed and engineered by the teams themselves.

Although the props and contestants are little, this was a big challenge that began four months ago. The first step was finding coaches for the team who would spend the following weekends with children other than their own, every coach assisting on a different aspect of the tournament. To our amazement, there were over two dozen volunteers from the Orta Factory, all applying within a few days time. With a great squad of coaches, our team was shaped and began working right away.

So many things were achieved during these months: none of the kids knew each other before, and every one brought different skills to the table, including the coaches. Above all, our team was successful in communication with each other over tiring weekends, creating ideas and managing a complicated project together.

In small breaks between presentations and robot-battles, I managed to talk with members of our team to find one major thing in common. They were all so excited and lost in the moment, dealing with a real life issue with great enthusiasm – regardless of the place being a gym, and the tools being Lego pieces.

As the day came to a close, there was great anticipation to see which teams did best. Despite their weariness, the teams arrived in the conference hall to be presented with their medals and cups. Another, perhaps the greatest, aspect of this tournament is that everyone is a winner. Every child gets a medal and a big round of applause. Every coach is recognized and included in the celebration. Best of all, even the cups are made of Lego blocks!

When our team OrtaBot was called on stage for the “Rising Star Cup” it was clear that all the kids and coaches had forgotten about their tiredness. They rushed to the stage, jumping and holding Orta flags to finally raise together a cup well deserved.

For more information:

http://www.bilimkahramanlari.org/ (Turkish)