SAKURA Tempesta, a junior and senior high school robotics team, started this season’s crowdfunding campaign on December 12, 2024! We will use the funds raised through this crowdfunding campaign to compete in FIRST Robotics Competition and FIRST Tech Challenge regional competitions in Minnesota, USA, and Seoul, South Korea as well as the FIRST Championship in April 2025 if qualified.

“Standing on the World Stage” – Breaking Down the Financial Barriers

Our Goals

Advancing to the FIRST Championship

Our goal is, first of all, to “stand on the stage of the world”. In order to participate in the FIRST Championship (the FRC/FTC world championship), there are many financial and technical challenges. Despite starting with no experience and resources back in 2017, we have been able to successfully continue our activities because of the support of our sponsors, mentors, alumni and students, their families and friends as well as their passion for SAKURA Tempesta. In order to live up to their hopes, our aspiration is to give hope to everyone who wants to try something new and challenge themselves by showing the world that us, ordinary secondary school students can make a mark on the world through our activities in FRC and FTC!

Holding FRC/FTC competitions in Japan

Secondly, we plan to organize FRC/FTC competitions in Japan. The experience gained from actually participating in a competition and interacting with peers worldwide has extremely benefited us, and we would love for other junior and senior high school students in Japan to have the same experience as we do. By hosting regional competitions in Japan, we will spread the spirit of FIRST throughout Japan and bring a positive impact onto our society with the values gained through such experience.

Past Activities and Achievements

We, SAKURA Tempesta, have successfully competed in FRC and FTC competitions. In 2018, our rookie year, we won all rookie awards including one at the FIRST Championship. Since then, we have received awards every year including the most prestigious Chairman’s Award (a.k.a. Impact Award) and have participated in the world competition four times, the most as a Japanese team. Behind these achievements are the outreach activities we have been actively engaged in throughout the year.

Outreach activities to promote STEAM education

In light of the current shortage of science-related human resources in Japan, we have organized a variety of STEAM-themed events to increase the number of primary and secondary school students pursuing science-related fields as their future career. In cooperation with our sponsors, we have offered workshops where primary and secondary school students have the opportunity to build their own robots and experience the fun of doing so. These workshops also provide hands-on programming experience, creating an environment that makes it easy for people who knew nothing about robots to be exposed to them and be inspired.

These activities have been well received by the media. In particular, our story was featured on Disney+ and attracted a great deal of attention. We were one of the four teams in the world that was heavily featured on the Disney documentary, “More Than Robots”, which allowed people all around the world to learn about our achievements.

As you can see, in addition to building competitive robots, we put in a significant effort into outreach activities. Please take a look at our website for details of our various events and activities!

Why do we need assistance now?

We, SAKURA Tempesta, do not collect participation fees from our members, because we do not want socioeconomical barriers to be the reason of not being able to access STEAM education. Therefore, we need to raise all the funds for participation, production and other expenses for the competition by ourselves. As shown in the figure below, the amount needed for the competition amounts to 3.4 million yen ($28,000) per year. Furthermore, recent price hikes have further increased the cost. Given this situation, we have received support from our sponsors, but have not yet reached the required amount. Without these funds, we may not be able to participate in competitions as well as outreach activities. We NEED YOUR HELP to reach our goal. Thank you in advance for your support.

How We Will Use Your Donations

Here’s how we plan to use your donations: Most of the money will go towards materials for building our robots for the upcoming FRC and FTC competitions. We have set a goal of $5,000 for this project.

Breakdown:
FRC: $2,100
FTC: $2,100
service fees: $800

This breakdown shows the difference between our estimated budget and the actual amount of money we have. This would allow us to have sufficient funds for building our robots, and we really appreciate your support! 

Request for Support

Unfortunately, FRC and FTC are barely known in Japan. There are currently only 7 FRC and 3 FTC teams in the country. Because of this, there are no regional events in Japan, and we have no choice but to travel abroad to compete. The closest regional competition for FRC is in Hawaii, and for FTC, it’s in South Korea. This means that in addition to the competition fees, we must cover our members’ travel, accommodation, and food expenses, which add up quite a lot.

Moreover, the lack of understanding in FRC and FTC’s values makes it hard to secure sponsorships from companies in Japan as many do not recognize merits in supporting secondary school students and educational programs. The fact that the Japanese government does not provide any sort of tax exemption for sponsoring even regular non-profit organizations or schools has been one of the main reasons.

On top of that, Japan doesn’t have a strong culture of donations, making fundraising a significant challenge.

Furthermore, the technical materials and competition rules are all provided in English, which adds another layer of complexity for Japanese students due to the significant language barrier.

All these factors make our challenge in the FIRST competitions so difficult, yet we still do it, thanks to our precious sponsors and people that believe in us. We believe overcoming these challenges can not only make us more robust, but also encourage other teenagers, and perhaps, make a small yet strong impact on the world.

We appreciate your understanding and support for our activities.