NTIC Luncheon 25 North Texas masjids · May 2026
In May 2026, leaders of 25 North Texas masjids and Islamic organizations gathered at the Innovation Hub for the North Texas Islamic Council luncheon. Speakers including NTIC President Mujeeb Kazi, ISNA's Br. Azhar Azeez, EPIC's Imam Nadim Bashir, and the Sachse Muslim Society's Br. Rasheed Mohamed addressed the community on what ITKAN is building and why STEM belongs at the heart of the masjid. The gathering rallied the region's mosques behind a shared model: using robotics to give underserved youth a real path into engineering. For ITKAN, whose first team started in a community room at MAS Dallas, the luncheon was a kind of homecoming, a chance to show religious and community leaders the 24,000 sqft Hub the movement had grown into. Several speakers framed the work as an extension of the mosque's historic role as a place of learning. It was a clear signal that the region's Islamic institutions see STEM access as part of their mission too.
View→ ISNA Conventions Chicago & Dallas
ITKAN has been invited to the Islamic Society of North America's national conventions four years running, in Chicago and Dallas, with crowds ranging from 20,000 to 30,000 people each. Running robotics-demo booths and main-stage presentations, the team puts FIRST robotics directly in front of families from across the country. Across these conventions ITKAN has helped introduce more than 50,000 people to the FIRST ecosystem, and the short camps it runs on the convention floor convert roughly a third of participants into actual team members. For many families, the booth is their first encounter with competitive robotics and the realization that it is within reach for their kids. It is grassroots recruitment at national scale: meeting the community where it already gathers, then giving its children a way in.
View→ ICNA Baltimore National convention
At ICNA Baltimore, a convention of more than 40,000 attendees, a single conversation with community leader Ibad Ar-Rahman became the catalyst for ITKAN's entire North Carolina footprint. There was no formal pitch and no signed agreement, just a shared belief that the model could work in his community. That one exchange has since grown into a cluster of ten teams across six North Carolina chapters, the densest concentration of ITKAN teams anywhere outside Texas. In a single season, 100% of those NC FTC teams advanced to the State Championship, and two of them, ITKAN JIAR and IAR, qualified for the FIRST World Championship. North Carolina is the clearest evidence that the ITKAN model travels, and that the bridge into a new community is often built one conversation at a time.
View→ GEM Summit, Doha Qatar · Jan 2026
ITKAN took the model abroad at the GEM Summit in Doha, Qatar, a gathering of more than 1,000 innovators from over 120 countries. The team ran hands-on workshops at its booth and gave a mainstage talk introducing FIRST robotics to educators and leaders from around the world. The trip produced a partnership with the Qatar Foundation to expand STEM and FIRST programming across the Middle East, India, and Bangladesh, a structured path to seed the model where access to competitive robotics is still scarce. For a program that began in a single community room, presenting on an international stage was a statement of how far the playbook can travel. It also positioned ITKAN as a bridge, sharing what it has learned in person with the people who can carry it across continents.
View→ MUHSEN Robotics for all
In partnership with MUHSEN (Muslims Understanding and Helping Special Education Needs), ITKAN runs inclusive STEM camps for children with disabilities at a one-to-one mentor ratio. Across five camps, about 60 students have built roughly 100 robots, each paired with an ITKAN student who guides them through the build. To run the camps well, more than 20 ITKAN mentors have earned formal special-needs sensitivity certification, training that reshapes how they teach everywhere. The program reflects a core ITKAN belief, that robotics should be genuinely for everyone, not only the students who find it easily. For the ITKAN mentors, the camps are as formative as for the kids they teach, a lesson in patience, adaptation, and what inclusion actually requires.
View→ Ma'Ruf Refugee Pipeline Dallas
Through Ma'Ruf, a Dallas refugee nonprofit, ITKAN runs tutoring and STEM camps for refugee youth that feed directly into the program. The camps meet students where they are, then open a door most never knew existed, a path from a first robotics camp into a competitive FIRST team. The clearest proof it works is Karim, recruited from a Ma'Ruf camp, who rose through the pipeline to become an Electrical Director on FRC 9128, one of the team's technical leadership roles. His story is the ITKAN model in miniature: a student introduced through outreach who became a leader mentoring the next group behind him. For refugee families rebuilding their lives, the program offers their children a concrete foothold in engineering. It is the pipeline working exactly as designed, from a camp table to a leadership role on a world-class team.
View→ NTIC Luncheon 25 North Texas masjids · May 2026
In May 2026, leaders of 25 North Texas masjids and Islamic organizations gathered at the Innovation Hub for the North Texas Islamic Council luncheon. Speakers including NTIC President Mujeeb Kazi, ISNA's Br. Azhar Azeez, EPIC's Imam Nadim Bashir, and the Sachse Muslim Society's Br. Rasheed Mohamed addressed the community on what ITKAN is building and why STEM belongs at the heart of the masjid. The gathering rallied the region's mosques behind a shared model: using robotics to give underserved youth a real path into engineering. For ITKAN, whose first team started in a community room at MAS Dallas, the luncheon was a kind of homecoming, a chance to show religious and community leaders the 24,000 sqft Hub the movement had grown into. Several speakers framed the work as an extension of the mosque's historic role as a place of learning. It was a clear signal that the region's Islamic institutions see STEM access as part of their mission too.
View→ ISNA Conventions Chicago & Dallas
ITKAN has been invited to the Islamic Society of North America's national conventions four years running, in Chicago and Dallas, with crowds ranging from 20,000 to 30,000 people each. Running robotics-demo booths and main-stage presentations, the team puts FIRST robotics directly in front of families from across the country. Across these conventions ITKAN has helped introduce more than 50,000 people to the FIRST ecosystem, and the short camps it runs on the convention floor convert roughly a third of participants into actual team members. For many families, the booth is their first encounter with competitive robotics and the realization that it is within reach for their kids. It is grassroots recruitment at national scale: meeting the community where it already gathers, then giving its children a way in.
View→ ICNA Baltimore National convention
At ICNA Baltimore, a convention of more than 40,000 attendees, a single conversation with community leader Ibad Ar-Rahman became the catalyst for ITKAN's entire North Carolina footprint. There was no formal pitch and no signed agreement, just a shared belief that the model could work in his community. That one exchange has since grown into a cluster of ten teams across six North Carolina chapters, the densest concentration of ITKAN teams anywhere outside Texas. In a single season, 100% of those NC FTC teams advanced to the State Championship, and two of them, ITKAN JIAR and IAR, qualified for the FIRST World Championship. North Carolina is the clearest evidence that the ITKAN model travels, and that the bridge into a new community is often built one conversation at a time.
View→ GEM Summit, Doha Qatar · Jan 2026
ITKAN took the model abroad at the GEM Summit in Doha, Qatar, a gathering of more than 1,000 innovators from over 120 countries. The team ran hands-on workshops at its booth and gave a mainstage talk introducing FIRST robotics to educators and leaders from around the world. The trip produced a partnership with the Qatar Foundation to expand STEM and FIRST programming across the Middle East, India, and Bangladesh, a structured path to seed the model where access to competitive robotics is still scarce. For a program that began in a single community room, presenting on an international stage was a statement of how far the playbook can travel. It also positioned ITKAN as a bridge, sharing what it has learned in person with the people who can carry it across continents.
View→ MUHSEN Robotics for all
In partnership with MUHSEN (Muslims Understanding and Helping Special Education Needs), ITKAN runs inclusive STEM camps for children with disabilities at a one-to-one mentor ratio. Across five camps, about 60 students have built roughly 100 robots, each paired with an ITKAN student who guides them through the build. To run the camps well, more than 20 ITKAN mentors have earned formal special-needs sensitivity certification, training that reshapes how they teach everywhere. The program reflects a core ITKAN belief, that robotics should be genuinely for everyone, not only the students who find it easily. For the ITKAN mentors, the camps are as formative as for the kids they teach, a lesson in patience, adaptation, and what inclusion actually requires.
View→ Ma'Ruf Refugee Pipeline Dallas
Through Ma'Ruf, a Dallas refugee nonprofit, ITKAN runs tutoring and STEM camps for refugee youth that feed directly into the program. The camps meet students where they are, then open a door most never knew existed, a path from a first robotics camp into a competitive FIRST team. The clearest proof it works is Karim, recruited from a Ma'Ruf camp, who rose through the pipeline to become an Electrical Director on FRC 9128, one of the team's technical leadership roles. His story is the ITKAN model in miniature: a student introduced through outreach who became a leader mentoring the next group behind him. For refugee families rebuilding their lives, the program offers their children a concrete foothold in engineering. It is the pipeline working exactly as designed, from a camp table to a leadership role on a world-class team.
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