Donate Recycled Door Window Motors to Your Local FIRST® Robotics Team

For the second year in a row, the Automotive Recyclers Association and the ARA Educational Foundation are proud to partner with FIRST® Robotics Competition to provide small motor parts to their competition teams. This unique partnership provides ARA members a chance to educate the next generation of engineers and their local community about the automotive recycling industry. This effort goes in hand with ARA’s increased efforts to educate the public about automotive recycling and green recycled parts.

FIRST® Robotics was founded in 1989 to inspire young people’s interest and participation in science and technology. The organization is based in Manchester, New Hampshire and each school year teams of 25 students or more are challenged to build and program robots to perform prescribed tasks against a field of competitors. Students in grades K-3, 4-8, and high school are eligble to compete.

Last year, ARA members from over 40 states donated to FIRST® Robotics teams in their community. We are looking for even more volunteers this year, with a goal of donating over 2,000 individual motors by the end of October.

This is a win-win for ARA and FIRST® in that ARA Members can directly impact the teams and enlighten them about automotive recycling and the FIRST® teams have a reliable donation source for their program.

How you can participate

1.  FIRST® teams are looking for:

• Sets of 2 or 4 working door window motors.
• The motors must be from the same vehicle, so that the right door window motor matches the left door window motor.
• The motors should be clearly identified with the year, make, and model of the vehicle they came from.

2.  ARA members can mail as many sets of door window motors as possible directly to the FIRST® warehouse location below.

Ship to:

Andy Mark, Attn: FIRST Choice, 2311 North Washington St., Kokomo, IN 46901

(765) 868-4779

Please include your business card along with the motors you donate, so that FIRST® teams know what recycling facility provided their motors, and realize that the motors are coming from all over the country. Your help creates goodwill from our industry.

3.  FIRST® staff will collect the donated motors, package them in a plastic bag with ARA’s logo and informational material about the aautomotive recycling industry. The motors will then be distributed to the teams that need them.

ARA looks forward to helping FIRST® teams succeed in this exciting competition! Help us reach our goal of donating over 2,000 motors by the end of October!

To learn more about the FIRST® program, visit www.usfirst.org. Please notify ARA staff when you have donated a motor to FIRST®. We want to make sure everyone receives recognition for their contribution! For questions related to donating motors and ARA’s partnership with the program, please contact ARA and FIRST® staff below:

Jessica Thomas, Director of State Government and Grassroots Affairs

jessica@a-r-a.org or (571) 208-0428

Ginny Whelan, ARA Educational Foundation Managing Director and ARA University President

ginny@araeducation.org or (609) 451-0760

Collin Fultz, Kit of Parts Engineer, FIRST® Robotics Competition

cfultz@usfirst.org or (800) 871-8326 x 121