In an entrapped world affected by Covid-19, FIRST Global has yet again launched the fifth (5th) edition of its annual challenge which seems to be more inspiring with attaching solutions to the world’s current greatest fight, ranging from economy to health, environment, and education. On the other hand, the already technologically-lagged Liberia that has been placed among the top ten poorest countries in the world is coupled with microeconomic shocks since the emergence of the pandemic that arbitrarily closed schools, impedes free movement, and despair innovators and researchers aspirations opting to see a new Liberia.

Despite STEM Education having very low priorities among competing values, Team Liberia for the last five years has not only emerged to represent the country on international competitive stages, Team Liberia has created a unified umbrella that envisioned building a unique and unparalleled platform for both the privileged and underprivileged students and youths of Liberia to come together in one place, in order to share knowledge, discover, invent, design, and build a new Liberia through the innovations of Science, Technology Engineering, and Mathematics. Team Liberia sees this year’s challenge that imbeds Electromechanical Engineering and Astronomy adventures as a motivational stand to continuously petition our government to creates national science and technology infrastructure programs, manages the expansion of national innovation systems, provides students of Liberia with mentorship and scholarship support to pursue study in basic sciences, and lastly develops programs with the goals of recognizing students with talents and skills for research, pushing them to realize their studies potential, inspiring them to take up research careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, and ensuring the growth of the best scientific minds for research and development of the country.

Our Team is comprised of high school students with different backgrounds, traits, and no experience in robotics, but they have one dream and passion to sign up for STEM career paths in order to close the long distance gap between Liberia and STEM education by promoting the culture of research on problems affecting Liberia and the rest of the world, and finding possible solutions to solve them.

Team Liberia mentors comprised of all past students or alumni and below are names of our students:

William Sirleaf is a sixteen-year-old and a senior student of Weltona Christian High School. William aspires to become an IT specialist. As the Captain of Team Liberia in this year’s challenge, Sirleaf desires to use STEM skills to develop modern technology in Liberia.

Tyrese Turay is a junior learner at the Bravid Washington Episcopal High School. Tyrese is a fifteen-year-old and he aspires to be a Civil Engineer. Tyrese’s excitement about this year’s challenge is the cooperation with his team members and skills he will acquire. Tyrese cannot wait to design and build his first robot and satellite!

Manyango Joyfe jr is a sixteen-year-old student from the St. Kizito Catholic High School in Monrovia. Mayango grew passion for robotics upon seeing his sister representing Team Liberia in 2019, which led him to quickly divert his future career from social science to Architecture Engineering.