POMPTON PLAINS, N.J. - s4story -- Four Millburn, NJ High School students kicked off their back-to-school season 7,000 miles from home in classrooms in Kisii, Kenya.

While many students spent the final days of summer relaxing, these New Jersey teens were hard at work, helping nonprofit TEEEM expand the student-led robotics program they launched last year from a single U.S.- Kenya school partnership to five.

The students – Ayden Dai, Karson Jiang, and Derek Zhang, all juniors, and Roger Zhu, a senior – traveled to Kenya at the end of August, with TEEEM (The Empathy Equality Entrepreneurship Mission), a nonprofit that helps students turn empathy into action through social entrepreneurship.

During the trip, the students took TEEEM's Robotics program to the next level:

• Introduced a new coding curriculum to Kenyan teachers,
• Helped stage a robotics soccer competition featuring nine student teams from five Kenyan schools, and
• Worked alongside Kenyan educators to build a locally sustainable program.

Now back in the U.S., Millburn High School students in TEEEM's robotics program continue teaching Kenyan educators through virtual tutoring sessions before their own school day begins.

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TEEEM Invites Schools Nationwide to Join STEM Education Initiative

TEEEM's robotics initiative has expanded to now connect five northern New Jersey schools with five partner schools in Kenya.

TEEEM is opening the initiative to schools nationwide. Participating schools will be paired with partner schools in Kenya and possibly other communities, giving students the opportunity to collaborate across continents while helping expand access to hands-on robotics and coding education.

How TEEEM's U.S. – Kenya Robotics Initiative Began

In 2024, Millburn High School students Rusheel Mishra, Arin Kulkarni and Joey Deng formed RISE (Robotics in Schools Everywhere) and approached TEEEM about expanding robotics access.

TEEEM connected them with its Kenya partner, The GRACE Academic Center. They developed a 35-lesson curriculum and raised funds, matched by TEEEM, for 10 VEX Robotics IQ kits. Weekly virtual teacher training preceded TEEEM's first trip to Kenya in August 2025.

TEEEM is hosting another trip to Kenya in June 2027.

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About TEEEM

TEEEM (The Empathy Equality Entrepreneurship Mission) is a nonprofit that helps students turn empathy into action through social entrepreneurship. TEEEM provides K–12 schools with free resources that empower students with the skills, mindset and real-world experiences to lead with empathy and think like entrepreneurs to drive positive change.

TEEEM currently partners with more than 100 schools across the United States, reaching more than 3,500 students, and supports partner communities in Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Ecuador, Haiti, Kenya, Peru, Uganda, and the United States, including West Virginia and South Dakota. Learn more at http://www.teeem.org.