International Repair Day

International Repair Day

International Repair Day is a joint initiative of the Open Repair Alliance, celebrated every year on the third Saturday of October. In 2022, Repair Day will take place on Saturday 15th October. The theme for the 2022 edition is still to be announced, but it’s never too early to start planning your own celebration. Celebrate Repair Day Check out their resources and get involved! There are many things you can do to celebrate International Repair Day: from attempting to fix something yourself to dropping by a local shop and get your devices back to life. We want everyone to take pride in fixing their things, and to motivate fixers – enthusiasts and professionals – to share their repair skills and get others involved. We want everyone to be part of Repair Day, online as well as offline. Here are some ideas to get involved on the day: Attend or organise a community repair eventSupport a local repair businessFix something yourself, or share your skills with othersShare a picture of...
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ECSA 2022 Conference: Citizen Science for Planetary Health

ECSA 2022 Conference: Citizen Science for Planetary Health

Photo by Florian Wehde on Unsplash Why “Citizen Science for Planetary Health”? Because the health of our planet is at risk. To preserve and support the well-being of all life on Earth, we need the commitment and efforts of everyone – policy makers, the public, business, science and research. Citizen science offers effective and innovative ways to do transdisciplinary research and influence decision-making in multiple areas and ways. Citizen science is particularly suited to connect diverse fields and diverse actors in the common endeavour of collaborating in research.The concept of planetary health is based on the understanding that human health and human civilization depend on thriving natural systems and the sustainable stewardship of those natural systems. This demands not only knowledge, commitment and engagement of health and environmental sciences, but inter- and transdisciplinary efforts from all research fields and societal and political actors. The ECSA 2022 Conference invites researchers from all disciplines, civil society actors, citizen scientists, policy decision-makers and all interested in the topic in...
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Gosanitize! Go Girls ICT (South Sudan)’s response to Covid 19

Gosanitize! Go Girls ICT (South Sudan)’s response to Covid 19

By Mugethi Gitau Comment Closed
South Sudan is a country that depends entirely on imports from its neighboring countries and during the pandemic, products such as hand sanitizers became more expensive as their demand was high and not affordable to the common person in the community. GoGirls inspiration to research and come up with a hand sanitizer called Gosanitize from locally sourced resources within South Sudan was because of the above challenges. Ten female local brewers were trained to make highly concentrated alcohol (Ethanol) for use in the hand sanitizer. To achieve this, GoGirls ICT Initiative team together with chemistry experts, had a peer-to-peer virtual mentorship exchange with Bibliothèque-MboaLab, Cameroon. But alas! A hurdle. To enable this project to succeed, they needed to overcome a major hurdle: religious beliefs and the extent to which women who make alcohol are viewed as contributors to the prevalence of hooliganism in the society. Not to be associated with a bad name in their society that taints their religious beliefs, some...
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ECSA 2022 Conference: Citizen Science for Planetary Health

ECSA 2022 Conference: Citizen Science for Planetary Health

By Mugethi Gitau Comment Closed
We got some great updates about the 4th international ECSA Conference 2022! When: From the 5th-8th October 2022Where: In Berlin Why “Citizen Science for Planetary Health”? Because the health of our planet is at risk. To preserve and support the well-being of all life on Earth, we need the commitment and efforts of everyone – policy makers, the public, business, science and research. Citizen science offers effective and innovative ways to do transdisciplinary research and influence decision-making in multiple areas and ways. Citizen science is particularly suited to connect diverse fields and diverse actors in the common endeavour of collaborating in research.The concept of planetary health is based on the understanding that human health and human civilization depend on thriving natural systems and the sustainable stewardship of those natural systems. This demands not only knowledge, commitment and engagement of health and environmental sciences, but inter- and transdisciplinary efforts from all research fields and societal and political actors. The ECSA 2022 Conference invites...
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Join our monthly hangouts shaping a gloCal Citizen Social Science Approach

By Mugethi Gitau Comment Closed
GIG, in its role as CoAct consortium member, strives to contribute to the shaping of this approach with a global bottom-up perspective on how Science should/is be thought of and addressed, and how inclusive bottom-up practices are enabled, in most diverse contexts around the world. Building on a series of hangouts, webinars, and other conversations we hosted over the last two years, we concluded in 5 key leading topics. In 2022 we will Host one hangout per topic and invite you to join the conversationCo-write an open publication and invite you to co-author [more info here] as our contribution to the shaping of an inclusive Citizen Social Science approach! Join our Hangouts! During the hangouts we will have a vibrant conversation around one topic at a time. We will also provide information regarding the co-writing and answer questions to everyone who is interested to co-author with us! April 21: Locally driven protocols and local traditions in ScienceMay 19: The ownership of ScienceJune 23: Decolonizing our educational/institutional...
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Our first CoAct 2022 hangout is around the corner!

Our first CoAct 2022 hangout is around the corner!

By Mugethi Gitau Comment Closed
Join us on Thursday, April 21st, 2PM CEST We will meet for the first of a series of five hangouts providing a space for conversation and co-shaping an inclusive *Open *Citizen *Social Science landscape - Voices and methods from around the world.The Global Innovation Gathering is a consortium member of the Horizon 2020 project ‘CoAct – Co-Creating a Citizen Social Science Approach’. Within CoAct, one of our goals is to foster a critical debate, addressing what Co-Creation, what inclusive approaches, and what science should look like when accounting for multiple voices, needs, and traditions from all around the world. Throughout the year we are going to host five hangouts discussing central topics the community identified. These hangouts accompany a process of co-writing an open publication that brings together your critical understandings to inclusive Citizen Social Science from a gloCal perspective. You can become a co-author, read more here. Register here for the hangout Topic: Locally driven protocols and local traditions in OCSS What is required...
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MboaLab inaugurates its “Bio Innovation Hub”

MboaLab inaugurates its “Bio Innovation Hub”

By Ricardo Ruiz Comment Closed
MboaLab committed to educating, transforming and positively impacting the lives of the Cameroonian people through its DIY lab. Last February, Mboalab, in partnership with the University of Cambridge, inaugurated its "Bio-Innovation Hub". This Hub is a shared biotechnology laboratory made available to researchers and students and is already undoubtedly contributing to the democratisation of biotechnology in Africa.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AD5m_UQrw8A Founded in 2018, with the aim to tackle the lack of biology laboratory equipment and reagents; MboaLab started bridging the gap in access to scientific equipment, particularly in Cameroon. This is the seed of what became the DIY biotechnology lab, MboaLab, in 2018 Biomakers at Mboa Bio Innovation Hub DIY biotechnology labs believe that science shouldn't be reserved for those who are formally qualified scientists and that anyone and everyone should be able to dabble in science. Therefore, in partnership with local universities, MboaLab organises and runs internship and training programs to equip growing talents in molecular biology, synthetic biology, engineering, and biotechnology. As a result, about 50...
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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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What is CoAct?

What is CoAct?

By Mugethi GitauNo Comments
https://youtu.be/kPuSDkEjEo8 Co-designing Citizen Social Science for Collective ActionCoAct is a project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. CoAct is proposing a new understanding of Citizen Social Science as participatory research co-designed and directly driven by citizen groups sharing a social concern, in which they become co-researchers in processes commonly dominated by academic researchers. CoAct aims to bring together and further develop methods to give citizen groups an equal ‘seat at the table’ through active participation in research, from the design to the interpretation of the results and their transformation into concrete actions. We call this Citizen Social Science!Citizen Social Science combines equal collaboration between citizen groups (co-researchers) that are sharing a social concern and academic researchers. Such an approach enables to address pressing social issues from the bottom up, embedded in their social contexts, with robust research methods. We aim to co-create socially robust knowledge. How will we do Citizen Social Science?The research groups will develop locally embedded...
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Africa Hardware and Open Science Summit 2020

Africa Hardware and Open Science Summit 2020

Focusing on DIYBio & Sustainability in 2020 Africa OSH Summit 2020 will be held in Yaounde, Cameroon, from 14 to 16 May 2020, under the theme ‘Growing the Do-It-Yourself & Do-It-Together (DIY/DIT) Culture for Community Transformation’. It will be hosted by Mboa Lab. The summit will host workshops, discussions and conferences on making, hacking and DIYBio for a wide range of stakeholders to engage with the processes of design, co-creation, problem solving. Additionally participants will be engaged on how the open science & hardware movement can contribute to sustainable change in Africa. Ultimately we aim to achieve an ecosystem for innovation that is locally adapted, culturally relevant, technologically feasible, economically viable, and environmentally sustainable APPLICATIONS ARE REVIEWED ON A ROLLING BASIS. We will close applications by 29 February, and finalize participant selection in early March. To apply, please fill the form below or visit bit.ly/AfricaOSH2020. ...
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