COVID-19 Update for our community
Kia ora koutou,
The impact of COVID-19 on New Zealanders and our community has created a lot of uncertainty as things change daily. It has been a particularly difficult week for our community with the sad news that World Championships have been cancelled.
Our top priorities are your wellbeing and enjoyment of robotics. We are doing our best to find a balance of providing events to encourage engagement in robotics, while keeping everybody safe.
Guided by the Ministry of Health, we are implementing tighter policies around how our scrimmages are run during this time.
All planned scrimmages before 30th April will be postponed or cancelled until beginning of May (start of Term 2).
Scrimmages at the start of Term 2 will be limited in size – participants, supporting staff and parents will be required to RSVP with Kiwibots to ensure the total capacity is manageable for venue and less than 500 people total.
We aim to provide hand sanitiser at scrimmages
We ask that
all students choosing to work on KiwiChallenge robots practise exceptional hygiene during this time - extra steps with cleaning and hygiene are one of the best preventative measures we can take. If anyone is feeling unwell, please do not meet with your team, stay at home, and contact Healthline or your GP.
If the Ministry of Education or government requires students to move to remote learning or a temporary closure of schools, we recommend teams do not meet up during that time to protect our students as much as possible.
Planning is currently underway for how we can provide scrimmages at the beginning of Term 2 as safely as possible. We will still be supplying VEX equipment as usual throughout this time, and our new webstore is due to launch shortly.
We are regularly reviewing our action plans as developments continue, and a formal review will be done on April 24th 2020 to assess if scrimmages can begin in Term 2.
Thank you again for your understanding and co-operation.
Ngā mihi nui,
Janet Van
National Manager, Kiwibots – NZ Robotics Charitable Trust
