Category: GIG Network

Through the support of the Moss Challenge Covid-19 action, promoted by the Mozilla Foundation, Careables Casa Criatura developed an open-source aerosol box model to use at Intensive Care Units (ICU). The aerosol box is used in the process of intubation and extubation of patients, to avoid the contact of aerosol sprays of patients with doctors. The product was validated with doctors from 2 different hospitals in the Metropolitan Region of Recife, who have experience in the field of orotracheal intubation. In addition to the product itself, a community that brings together professors, medical students and designers from Casa Criatura were created. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSSgnj6U1NQ Aerosol Box development at Casa Criatura As it is an equipment to use in ICUs, we now want to seek certification and registration of a free patent. Find the open-source project to be replied and further developed in your community here! ...

We have been selected as one of the 10 post-Covid “common challenges” projects of the Frena La Curva (FLC) platform, which is present in 16 countries. FLC is a citizen platform where volunteers, entrepreneurs, activists, social organisations, makers and public and open innovation labs, cooperate to channel and organise social energy and civic resilience in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic by giving a response from civil society that is complementary to that of government and essential public services. Our project is named “CoAct: Citizen Science and Mental Health” and is a project of social citizen science on mental health that shares personal experiences on accompaniment and social support networks. Project summary: COVID-19 further emphasizes that the need to strive to maintain good mental health must be a concern of all. How do we care and can we be better cared for? Can people with their own experience contribute their baggage? Can we take advantage of existing resources...

The Olabi, in Brazil, built a digital platform that organises information related to the decentralised production of medical supplies during the pandemic. Protege BR shows the production of more than 220 groups across Brazil, organises online events to transfer technology between them, connect the groups with health agents and donors, and also provides open PPE projects already in use in the country. The project intends to increase the production of urgent items in the context of COVID-19, and also develop a network infrastructure able to promote dialogue around different areas of such a large country (in Brazil, there are 200 million inhabitants spread over more than 8 million square meters). The social organisation is working in partnership with Google.org and the Ford Foundation in the quest to reduce the effects of the pandemic in the country where the contamination grows the most. We organise Zoom meetings every Tuesday 7pm in Rio de Janeiro time. Get in touch and follow our...

You put a lot of love and effort in your open hardware and you want others to find it and see how grand it is? Here is something to help you out: the Open Know-How Manifest Standard Specification 1.0 is out! What is this? A hardware metadata standard for discoverability of open hardware. How does this work? Via a human and machine-readable "manifest" file you can put next to your read-me and license files (see an example here). This simple text file formatted in YAML will flag web crawlers that there is something interesting out there and pass them on the information you want to share about your project! You can create a manifest file for your hardware project in our web interface and add a reference to it in our reference implementation database. This will automatically index it in our automated search page along more than 400 other pieces of hardware. We also currently work on the integration of this standard in the Observatory of Open Hardware, our...

Innovations spanning food supplies, medical records and PPE manufacture were today included in the final three awards made by Mozilla from its COVID-19 Solutions Fund. The Fund was established at the end of March by the Mozilla Open Source Support Program (MOSS), to offer up to $50,000 each to open source technology projects responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. In just two months, the Fund received 163 applicants from 30 countries and is now closed to new applications. OpenMRS is a robust, scalable, user-driven, open source electronic medical record system platform currently used to manage more than 12.6 million patients at over 5,500 health facilities in 64 countries. Using Kenya as a primary use case, their COVID-19 Response project will coordinate work on OpenMRS COVID-19 solutions emerging from their community, particularly “pop-up” hospitals, into a COVID-19 package for immediate use. This package will be built for eventual re-use as a foundation for a suite of tools that will become the OpenMRS Public Health Response distribution. Science-based data collection...

Careables is an international platform collaboration that enables citizens to co-design and deliver people-centred health products through means of digital fabrication. In Latin America, partners LabCOCO, Casa Criatura and Coletivo 3D (in Olinda city) and LabProComum (city of Santos) function as the hubs to connect to local communities of citizens with (physical) healthcare needs, carers, and public healthcare professionals with the community of makers and medical herbalists. At the beginning of March 2020, Careables Latin America focused on working with a growing health challenge, the Covid-19 crisis. Events, meetings, open-source stadiometer construction and DIY herbal pillows were left behind, and we started primary research on Covid-19 Careables products feasible to be reproduced in our reality. Much based on Thingiverse, we could select a wide range of facemasks, door openers, sterilizer, steam inhalation tubes. At some point, we shared an open document with a collection of valuable links on that moment of the coronavirus pandemic. Since its beginning, Careables Olinda had a relevant dialogue with the Secretary of Health of Olinda. And after a meeting, we decided to tackle...

The month of February was a month for ‘Innovation with a cause’. Nepal Communitere in partnership with Field Ready successfully wrapped up the first-ever Humanitarian Design Challenge (HDC) where students from different disciplines formed 4 multidisciplinary teams to prepare prototypes to combat real-life challenges! 20 avid learners from different colleges and universities across Kathmandu participated in this challenge where they were trained and guided to apply skills and knowledge of different digital manufacturing tools such as 3D printing, CNC, Laser cutting and other powerful 3D design software. The 2-week long design challenge allowed the teams to go through a simulated design activity with a focus on Human-Centred Design research,  documentation and access to open-source platforms such as Careables, Field Ready, Thingiverse, GrabCAD and others. The participant teams identified a product on one of these open-source platforms and adapted and iterated for the Nepali market. They then designed a new prototype incorporating findings from their design-thinking interviews. Pallab Shrestha, Program Officer of FabLab and Pradita Pradhan, Program Coordinator of...

GIG member Pitchworthy is part of a group that has an interesting announcement coming up: Safir offers you the opportunity to join the first regional network of social impact incubators in Northern Africa and the Middle East. By participating in Safir, you can benefit from skill-building sessions to share your methodologies and create a regional toolkit to support innovative entrepreneurship. The selected structures will also be in charge of supporting young project leaders. This program is open to partners in 9 countries: Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya (diaspora), Morocco, Palestine, Syria (diaspora), Tunisia. Safir is a program in partnership with: Institut Français, CFI, AUF, ANND, Lab'ess, and Pitchworthy (Bloom), and is co-financed by the European Union. Find out more here. Deadline: June 28, 2020 ...

Born on the day after the announcement of the first three cases of coronavirus in Madagascar in the begining of April, Hackoragna, a name composed of "Hack" and "Koragna", is an 100% online collaborative platform that aims to develop the digital economy of Madagascar by bringing together "informal" talents as well as micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in Madagascar in an online, participatory and democratic cooperative. Around the world, millions of people are unemployed because of COVID-19 and Madagascar is not spared; the virus does not discriminate, but its economic and social impact is unevenly distributed. Workers in tourism, the arts, commerce, education and the informal sector are the most affected. Only digital and innovative enterprises survive and are overwhelmed with work.  In front of all this, young Malagasy locals and diaspora youth have organized themselves online and decided to organize #hackoragnavirus, a COVID19 Hackathon in less than 10 days. This is a Hackathon that brought together young malagasy innovators from...

Between 11-13 May 2020 HONF Foundation, CAST Foundation, Social-Digital Innovation and Ke:Kini organized an online grassroots hackathon for Indonesia. GIG wasn’t only represented by Regina (SDI) and Ira (HONF), Saad came on board as a mentor and Ricardo as an evaluator to help us activate citizens’ zest for action and creativity and form interdisciplinary teams of artists, makers, hackers, designers, scientists and practitioners who had never met before. castfoundation.id We worked with them to develop locally relevant open source hardware solutions during the covid-19 pandemic, and help us develop a better future in the form of culture hacks and next steps towards a sustainable, circular economy. Projects that the participants came up with included an affordable UV-C light box to disinfect clothes in hospitals, wearable tech alerting when others come too close, a community alarm system, a kids’ hat that buzzes when its wearer is about to touch their face, a VR exhibition app and many more. To follow up, teams...