St Paul’s School, Firefly

Using motorsports to encourage students to excel in STEM subjects

At Kusuma Trust, we’re keen to do what we can to encourage young people’s interest in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM). We supported a unique challenge taken on by a team of pupils at St Paul’s School to design, build and race an electric car.

The team of student engineers call themselves Team Firefly. Having successfully built the car, they needed to transport it to competitions. We gave a grant of £7,000 towards buying the school a new trailer. It can hold up to four cars, as well as the tools and equipment needed on race days, which means more teams can compete.

A team of pupils at St Paul’s School have designed, built and raced an electric car, as part of a project to inspire students to improve their STEM skills.
We gave a grant of £7,000 towards buying a new trailer to transport the car to competitions.
Team Firefly started with 11 participants and now has over 40.

Young engineers race to the top

Team Firefly started with 11 participants and now has over 40. After competing in Greenpower IET Formula 24 heats at Goodwood and Dunsfold Park race tracks, Firefly smashed their previous records and qualified for the international finals.

The competitions are run by the Greenpower Education Trust, a UK-based charity that harnesses the excitement of motorsport to inspire more than 10,000 participants a year to excel in STEM.

One competition participant said: “Having my involvement in Greenpower on my CV when I applied for university and placements really helped me stand out. The contacts I made at Greenpower also helped me to arrange my work placement during my degree.”

“We’ve had so much fun with the project that we have absolutely no intentions of stopping here. All of us have learnt some incredible skills we’d otherwise have never even considered, and many of our team have their hearts set on careers in British engineering already.”

Member of Team Firefly