For the past six years seven middle-school students have worked together to program a robot to perform hundreds of tasks out of a house in Mission Beach. This past year, the students have wired their robot to help alleviate global warming through tasks like turning off the lights, burying carbon molecules and rescuing stranded polar bears. Unfortunately the robots are not large enough to impact real global change – they’re made from Legos and wired with touch, light and ultrasonic sensors – but the project is sending the students to Atlanta to compete against peers from as far away as China who have also built global warming-busting robots. The project is a worldwide student competition called First Lego League and the Sandy Lego Beachbots team, based in Mission Beach, beat 50 teams in the Southern California Tournament last December to become the tournament winner to progress to the world championship in Atlanta. Brennan, 14, Ciara, 12, and Nadya Dooley, 11, have been competing for the past six years under the guidance of their coach and mother, Ming. The children are home schooled and live in Mission Beach most of the year. (The family also owns an off-the-grid home in Arizona and travels to India once a year where their father teaches meditation). Students from across the county comprise the rest of the young team: Rachel Brown, 13, of Clairemont, Sarah Hempton, 11, of Scripps Poway, Collin Metcalf, 14, of Mission Hills and Brannon Smudz, 12, of Poway. “I think it’s a wonderful program because they’re exposed to all aspects of real life,” Ming said. “They get to do research, work with other people, deal with time management and deadlines and have to present their work on their own…it teaches them a lot of independence and problem solving skills.” The league’s theme this year is climate connections and the students must wire their robot to perform 14 missions in 12-and-a-half minutes. Each mission receives points and the team with the highest points wins. “All of the missions are related to rising sea levels, climate change or stopping global warming,” said Brennan Ming. Through the project, Ciara Ming has also learned Dreamweaver and Photoshop to design the group’s website, www.kidskeeptheearthcool.org, and most of the website is written by the young students. There’s also a second part to the project: research. After watching An Inconvenient Truth and The 11th Hour, perusing the Internet and reading reports, the students arrived at their research thesis: Eat a burrito and save the earth. The students found that more than 27 million animals are slaughtered each day, which accounts for 18 percent of all greenhouse gases compared to the transportation sector’s 14 percent impact, according to the United Nations 2006 report. “There are tons of articles out there about this,” said Brennan Ming, who was raised vegetarian. “I’m actually surprised that so few people know about it.” At the last robotic competition, the students donned chef hats decorated with carrots and celery, warmed vegan pizza in a solar oven and educated the judges about the ills of the meat industry. On their website, the group encourages supporters to pledge not to eat meat for a few days. The students sell buttons and stickers that read “I eat less meat/stop global warming” with a slash across an image of a cow. The students plan to take their project one step further by asking the Mission Beach Town Council to install educational posts about global warming on poles around Mission Beach. “The students are getting a real education in city politics,” Ming said. Beachbots need your help! The Sandy Lego Beachbots may have made it to the First Lego League world championships but getting there is not cheap. Each contestant must pay $1,000 to enter the competition, plus pay airfare and hotel fees. The team plans to raise $7,000 to $10,000 to assist their journey, and is calling on the community for sponsorship. Enter a raffle drawing to win a massage, a martial arts membership, cranial sacral treatment and more. Drawing will take place April 11. Buy $5 tickets online at www.sandylegobeachbots.org or call (858) 344-9143. Mail a tax deductible donation to 830 Pismo Ct., San Diego, CA, 92109. Make the check payable to Southern California Regional Robotics Forum.