Team Guinea-Bissau is comprised of six high-school students, two mentors, and two volunteers from different ethnicities and cultures. Our team was brought together by the ATENA Foundation, which has been working very hard to promote gender equality within the country by inspiring girls to pursue a career in STEM. ATENA is creating a school for girls to teach them about science, technology, engineering, and math. We believe that it is very important for more women to be a part of the STEM field. Our team is made up of three girls whose names are Jucilene, Binta, and Suncar; and three boys: Marcelino, Ludivino, and Bioussum.

Jucilene is 17 years old and loves reading and writing. In the future, she wants to become a lawyer so she can defend women’s rights in Guinea-Bissau.

Binta is in 11th grade, in her free time she loves reading books and learning how some objects and machines are built. She decided to join the team to learn more about robots and technology in order to decide what path she takes after graduating high school.

Suncar is in 9th grade and in her free time she loves watching medicine and hospital-related TV shows. In the future, she wants to be a medical doctor.

Bioussum is graduating from high school in July. In his free time he likes to watch how cars are built and created by reusing plastics. He has a huge passion for technology and mathematics, he believes that they are essential to making life easier for men.

Ludivino is in 11th grade. In his free time he likes to read and play sports. In the future, he wants to do computer science.

Marcelino is in 11th grade and he loves mathematics, physics, and chemistry. He is very curious about how the world of technology and industries work, and how robots are built.

In addition to the six team members, we also have one female technical mentor, Jessica Carvalho De Melo, and one male non-technical mentor, Fabio Vaz Lopes. Jessica recently graduated from Auburn University with a degree in Industrial and Systems Engineering. She is passionate about the STEM field, and she wants to share everything she learned in college with young students so they can be inspired to also study engineering. She also has a non-profit organization called Olhos do Futuro, with the objective to help women and children in need. Fabio Vaz Lopes has a degree in accounting and works as an accountant for the NGO CODEDIC-GB. He is passionate about technology and as a non-technical mentor of Team Guinea-Bissau he wants to do his best to help the team get as many points as possible with his creative mindset and organizational skills. We also have two volunteers (Holdair and Aissatu) supporting the team.

Despite our background differences, one of the things all our members have in common is the love and desire to learn more about science, technology, and math. For all the students, this will be their first time participating in the FIRST Global Challenge. They are all eager and excited to learn and begin to build the robot. We would like to thank FIRST Global for giving us an opportunity to represent our country by being a part of such an incredible initiative. We are very grateful for everything FIRST Global has done for us, and we look forward to working with and meeting our peers from all over the world.