Fostering Egypt’s development through The Make and Innovation perspective

Fostering Egypt’s development through The Make and Innovation perspective

By Ricardo Ruiz Comment Closed
San3a Tech is a social enterprise established by young Egyptians to democratize technical innovation and build an impactful community of makers. It is also one of the Global Innovation Gathering hub members since 2022. Egypt faces a critical problem of missing the importance of research and development in the community and its effect on the industry and the Egyptian economy. Therefore, there needs to be an environment to bring together people interested in making, innovation and technology. The main challenges faced by Egypt today include the following: Lack of hands-on learning techniques in schools and universities in Egypt, although Education and training are crucial to national's industry development, economic growth and political stability. The Egyptian vocational schools need to provide the industry with qualified and skilled technicians. Craftsmanship produces low-quality creations due to different reasons. Co-innovating in MENA region These were the main drivers for San3a Tech founders to start the grass-root initiative in March 2012 through Fab Lab Egypt at first, followed by several projects and...
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Gertrude Mawuena Goh – Inspirational stories about gender-inclusive making

Gertrude Mawuena Goh – Inspirational stories about gender-inclusive making

By Ricardo Ruiz Comment Closed
Gertrude Mawuena GohAfrican Makerspace Network, Ghana Gertrude is currently working as an Executive Manager on the Africa Makerspace Network, a community of African Makerspaces. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the University of Ghana. “The more such stories spread, the more other women would view it as normal and develop an interest to join.” Gertrude’s first contact with the maker community was through organizing the 2nd African Makerspace Gathering in 2020.  It took her some time and reading to understand the concept and ideas behind making and makerspaces.  There were hardly any women in the organization team when Gertrude started her work for the Makerspace Gathering. As a project leader, she had to coordinate and chase her team to get things done – but realized that some would refuse.  “When I faced this challenge, I was asking myself a lot of questions: is it because I am new to the team, or because I am a woman?“ She put in extra hard...
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Sailing on Knowledge Waves

Sailing on Knowledge Waves

By Ricardo Ruiz Comment Closed
In 2014, Nave à Vela - a start-up co-founded by GIG member Miguel Chaves in Brazil - has the purpose of, in partnership with schools, building a more meaningful education, promoting increasingly innovative teaching, and respecting the particularities and reality of each school. The mission is to transform schools into places where students' creativity and curiosity awake. They develop activities encouraging them to build knowledge through practices, projects and even life purposes. The Curricular Base for Innovation Culture: a methodology fostering student's development. Nave à Vela (NAV) respects the needs of each school and its particularities. For this reason, it developed an adaptable methodology to fit each school's needs: the Curricular Base for a Culture of Innovation. Designed for kindergarten, elementary school and high school students, it promotes maker learning, in which the student learns by building toys and prototypes and authoring projects. In this process, he starts to have a more exploratory relationship with knowledge and, thus, develops his autonomy. By becoming...
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Critical Making awarded at Bali FabFest

Critical Making awarded at Bali FabFest

By Ricardo Ruiz Comment Closed
Picture by saadcaffeine During October's first quarter, FabFest Bali gathered experts and enthusiasts at Jimbaran Hub for ten days of inspiring activities and new connections at the premier conference for people-centred digital transformation. Representing the Critical Making project, former GIG Executive Board Member Regina Sipos explained: "How Critical Makers Propose Alternative Futures". The article, built upon the research conducted by consortium partners on the Critical Making project, explores how Making can be more gender-inclusive and support education and open-source hardware projects.  The Fab Fest team has unanimously chosen the Critical Making contribution as the best paper 🥇 presented at the sessions and hosted an extended conversation of about half an hour on the FabTV prime show. You can check Regina's research paper highlight session on their YouTube channel:  (starting at minute 27 but make sure to watch the previous discussion, too!). https://youtu.be/oqi8HB2LeUo?t=1650 In the video, Peter Troxler and Cindy Kohtala asked some critical questions, which were highly favourable and encouraging. Congrats to the whole Critical Making Consortium partners and all our fantastic co-researchers! 🇪🇺 The...
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Interview with Gertrude Goh from the Africa Makerspaces Network

Interview with Gertrude Goh from the Africa Makerspaces Network

By Ricardo Ruiz Comment Closed
The Africa Makerspace Network seeks to harmonize all makerspaces under one umbrella for growth and sustainable development in Africa. They achieve this by researching and contacting makerspaces in Africa, building makers' businesses, technical and entrepreneurial capacity, and enhancing prototype-to-product development and manufacturing. In this interview while in Berlin, Gertrude Gosh explains the Africa Makerspace Network and her work with Kumasi Hive in Ghana. https://youtu.be/_MhbhGWfkyo die Erstellung dieses Blogs Post  von der Stiftung Nord-Süd-Brücken mit finanzieller Unterstützung des BMZ Gefördert ...
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Please, Make things that Make sense!

Please, Make things that Make sense!

By Ricardo Ruiz Comment Closed
We are inviting makers & innovators globally to take part in the journey toward shaping a sustainable future of making.  Critical Making mentoring programme takes a deep dive into its principles:  Make Things That Make Sense: Create products and solutions that solve fundamental, real-world problems. Share How You Make: Develop guidelines that provide a framework for openly documenting everything about the project's making. Include Ecosystem Services: Aim to give back more than you take from the environment and include accounting practices that value natural resources. Integrate Local Knowledge: Build from within the community by working with local methods, materials and traditional resources. Build for Continuity: Design for the present and future; build social capacity, & aim for financial self-sufficiency.  Powering Inclusion and Openness. Critical Making adds scientific insights into the potential of the maker movement. Socially responsible making can show how global maker communities can offer new opportunities. Opportunities for young talents of all genders to contribute to an open society via open source innovation. You can learn more about...
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Makerspaces for sustainable development

Makerspaces for sustainable development

By Mugethi Gitau Comment Closed
Mboa Lab's Critical Making efforts in Cameroon Cameroon's MboaLab is teaching useful critical making skills with the aim of promoting women's self worth, their ability to determine their own choices and the right to influence social change for themselves and others as well as to remove gender bias through critical making . MboaLab is an open and collaborative space located in mefou-Assi village in Yaoundé, Cameroon. The aim of MboaLab is to catalyse sustainable local development and improve people’s living conditions through open science. Their approach focuses on the integration of local knowledge by centering the local community especially women. On 5th - 7th March 2022, MboaLab brought together secondary school girls, women in academia, and women in rural areas for 3 days of discovery and learning. Discovery and fabrication On Day 1, was a day of discovery where the participants were introduced to MboaLab, and had a tour where they visited the different sections of the lab with explanations about...
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Gig @ re:publica’22 is here!

Gig @ re:publica’22 is here!

By Mugethi Gitau Comment Closed
GIG @ re:publica ‘22 is finally happening in-person (after 2 years of not being able to) and we couldn't be more excited! This year’s festival with the “Any way the wind blows” happens on 8-10 June, at Arena Berlin & Festsaal Kreuzberg Yay for the Makerspace! The Makerspace is happening at re:publica 2022 and as usual is bringing together some of the most brilliant makers and innovators from around the world. Curated by the GIG and with support from our membership in the Distributed Design Platform, we host full-on three days of Workshops, Meetups and Exhibitions, all happening in the Makerspace at the heart of re:publica. Whether developing robots, learning how to replace plastic bags with biodegradable materials, making your own eco-prints on DIY bio leather, or recording crawling insects by adapting programming code, our workshops program will ensure you leave with some real Hands-on knowledge. Learn more about the Workshops program here.At the comfort of the HomeBase, our Meetups will bring speakers...
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Climate Lab in Science Camp Iraq

Climate Lab in Science Camp Iraq

By Ricardo Ruiz Comment Closed
Science Camp is a well-known on-field player on job-oriented technological education for social innovation in the city of Basra, at the banks of Shatt al-Arab in southern Iraq. Moreover, Science Camp plays a significant role in the region by proposing methods and products intrinsically connected to the SDGs.  The ever-greater effect of climate change in the region pressures water availability & quality to the population. And it challenges the 4 million inhabitants of the 3rd most extensive petrol reservoir globally. As part of the "Climate Lab in Science Camp" project, a partnership with German Corporation for International Cooperation GmbH (GIZ) ICT for Youth in Iraq, Science Camp practitioners created the "water from Air". It is a scalable & replicable design and can be duplicated by makers and Fab Lab global networks. The solution needs no extra energy despite the amount already used in air-conditioning systems. It provides clean water, with increased efficiency in high temperature & hot weather. And, as simple as it looks, it depends on...
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Join us in the Critical Making Mentoring Programme 2022

Join us in the Critical Making Mentoring Programme 2022

By Mugethi Gitau Comment Closed
We are excited to launch the Critical Making Mentoring Programme coming up this spring. Here is a sneak peak of what is to be expected! The Mentoring Programme will take place during 2022, requiring only a few hours of active participation per month. Further details will be announced soon! Do you want to stay updated on the mentoring programme? Register your email now to get a special notification when the programme opens for application in April! Update: The mentoring programme is open until the 31st of May. Click here for more details and to apply About Critical Making:Critical Making is a partnership to encourage responsible research & innovation to foster open access, inclusiveness and positive change across the global maker community. Together, we add scientific insights into the potential of the maker movement, and set up activities that focus on critical and socially responsible making. We aim to show how these communities can offer new opportunities for young makers of all genders to contribute to...
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