Posted with permission from the mods (Thank you ITD)
I am part of a local community workshop/maker-space/hacker-space (terms vary). In addition to our many shop areas and activities we play host to a local high school robotics team.
I am not fluent in the details of the competition circuit but over the last few months I have seen their work and its awesome to see a bunch of high school kids given access to a broad variety of equipment to build competition robots.
They have apparently come out on top of the western regional competition and have been advanced to a national level finals competition in St Louis, and they need help financing the trip.
I have already contributed myself as well as many of my cohorts here in the shop, however flying a bunch of folks to St Louis on a few weeks notice is not a cheap proposition and at this point they may not be able to attend. They are asking for $15K to get the team and equipment to the competition and feed/house them for a couple days. These kids are kicking ass at what they do and as someone who has competed on a national level myself (DCI drum and bugle corps) I know the kinds of sacrifices in time and money it takes to make things like this fly.
I was hoping that the doper community, generally supportive of endeavors in STEM education would be willing to help.
FTR I am not directly involved in the team, going to the event, nor am I the one running the GFM campaign. I have nothing to gain other than helping see a bunch of very hard working young minds get to run with their dreams.
The competition
The web site of the robotics team in question
The gofundme link.
https://www.gofundme.com/ku54kshs