What is a Fablab in 3 words
June 3rd, 2010Event: Haiti – The Plan for Reconstruction
April 5th, 2010Speaker: Patrick Delatour, Chairman of the Presidential Commission for the Reconstruction of Haiti; Frantz Verella, former Minister of Public Works, Transport and Communication
Time: April 16th, 11:30a–1:00p
Location: 6-120
The MIT Committee for Race and Diversity & the MIT Haiti Coordinating Committee is pleased to invite you to join us for a presentation by Minister Patrick Delatour and Professor Frantz Verella from Haiti. Minister Delatour is the Chairman for the Presidential Commission for the Reconstruction in Haiti. He will present the government’s vision for reconstruction. Professor Verella, the former Minister of Public Works, Transport and Communication, will talk about the planning and development challenges in Haiti.
Event: Reconstructing Haiti – Dr. Aseem Inam
April 2nd, 2010Time: 6:00p–7:30p
Location: W79-MPR, Simmons Hall Multipurpose Room
Dr. Aseem Inam is a member of the team invited by the Government of Haiti to design a rebuilding strategy to house the thousands of families affected by the devastating january 2010 earthquake. He will share his unique experiences and rare insights from his work in Haiti and outline the approach adopted for rebuilding after such a catatrophic event. He is the author of the book, Planning for the Unplanned: Recovering from Crises in Megacities, and a Fellow at the Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at MIT.
Amputation the defining injury for Haitian earthquake victims
April 1st, 2010
Caryn Brady, Ms. Alexandre’s physical therapist, helped move her to a wheelchair. The need to adapt is challenging for all new amputees, but in Haiti, there is no rehabilitation hospital, few physical therapists and a limited supply of crutches, canes and wheelchairs gradually being reinforced by donations.
Photo: Lynsey Addario for The New York Times
Thousands of Haitians have had their limbs crushed and amputated due to the earthquake. There are now thousands of new, young amputees in Haiti. In the developed world, the leading cause for amputation is diabetes and the average age of an amputee is 80 years old. In Haiti however, many amputees are in the current labour force. Rehabilitation is necessary to involve the patients in society and rebuilding Haiti. They cannot become an additional burden on Haiti’s economy.
Craig Gavras, executive director of Limbs For Life Foundation, inspects a prosthetic leg donated to the foundation at their warehouse in Guthrie, Oklahoma February 03, 2010.
Photo by Steve Gooch, The Oklahoman
Foundations like Limbs for Life and Physicians for Peace are collecting gently used prosthetics for Haiti. (Updates from twitter.com/prostheticlimb all the time.) But prosthesis are highly personal objects, and patient compliance could certainly falter due to something as simple as the wrong colour.
We are working with doctors from the Jaipur Foot Organisation, specialised in developing world prosthetics, to develop low-cost but not low-tech prosthetics and assistive technology which can be made in a Fablab. The MIT class Developing World Prosthetics is especially focussed on Haiti after the recent earthquake. We’ll keep you updated!
A language is a dialect with an army and navy
March 10th, 2010The above is a quote by Max Weinreich, an early 20th scholar of the Yiddish language. MIT Linguistics professor Michel Degraff quoted him in his excellent Pecha Kucha talk on Haitian Creole last month. Michel Degraff is a Creolistics expert and is often citing for his research on the relation between Creole and imperialist histories.
Tout moun se moun– every person is a person
There are a lot of misunderstandings about language and literacy in Haiti. Many believe that French is the official language of Haiti, while it is actually Haitian Creole. Only around 5-10 percent of Haitians are fluent in French. But even though Haitian Creole is the official language, many of the school books, official documents and communication are published in French. The literacy rate is often measured in terms of French. As recently as 2004, a Reuters journalist published an article on prostitution in Haiti referring to Haitian Creole as Haiti’s language of broken French.
http://matenwaclc.org Yves Dejean and his son Frisler at their Kreyòl-instruction school Sant Twa Ti Flè in Pòwòyal
Creole languages are developed during the colonisation of nations and the introduction of slaves. Because spoken by the ‘low class’ portion of the population, there is a bias to consider Creole inferior as a language as well. This bias exists to this day. When I was looking into enabling multi-lingual functionality on this site, I was struck by the fact that Haitian Creole was not presented as one of the options! (and speaking of this, if you can help with translating the site, please contact me (Nadya Peek)
“Notice: The artist is not dead. Call 3907-9920 for your shirt-printing jobs.” (Delmas 33, February, 22, 2010, photo by Dr. Evelyne Ancion DeGraff)
If you want to learn more about Michel Degraff’s work, do contact him!
Pecha Kucha for Haiti Presentation
February 25th, 2010We presented at the 15th Boston Pecha Kucha and the format was 20 slides, 20 seconds per slide. It was very stressful, but since I made notes beforehand, it’s easy for me to put the condensed talk online.
Hi, I’m Nadya Peek, I’m a student in this building in the Physics and Media group, involved with Fablabs and the Developing World Prosthetics class in D-lab.
In this photo you can see the materials for a fablab arriving at the College of India, Pune, Maharastra. Fablabs don’t always arrive in truckloads, each Fablab is built in a different way.
a Fablab contains, amongst other things, a 3 axis router, a small 3 axis mill, a laser cutter, a vinyl cutter and a full electronics workbench. The idea is that with a Fablab, you can make almost anything- furniture, electronics, prosthetics.
the Fablab in Pune took us 5 days to set up, and that was because there was no wiring, plumbing or floor when we showed up. We set up the large 3 axis mill first, and used that to make furniture to put the rest of the stuff on.
There are more than 30 labs around the world, sometimes it can be hard to set one up, sometimes it can be easy. This picture shows the mobile Fablab, which drives around the US and is currently in Ohio. It can be self powered, and although it is easier to set up, it’s much harder to take down or away– people rarely want to give it up!
A Fablab is not only machines though, and the machines are certainly less important than the people who help run them. Here you see us at the last Fablab conference, where people from Fablabs around the world showed up to teach each other how to make things.
Each lab is in a different place and will focus on different things. North American Fablabs are generally part of community centres and educational spaces. Here on the right you see AS220 in Providence, RI, they generally have a younger crowd of high school students working on computer and engineering skills.
These are images from the CabFabLab in the Hague, the Netherlands, where girls spent a day making customised keychains on the laser cutter. The event was part of a teach a girl about engineering program.
these images are from a Fablab in Soshangove, South Africa, where this girl learned how to connect and program all kinds of input and output devices to AVR microcontrollers. She now knows more about practical electrical engineering than many electrical engineering concentrators at MIT!
The Fablab can also be used for larger things. Here is a project by Larry Sass, a disaster response house made entirely on a Shopbot 3-axis mill and friction fit together using rubber mallets.
This Shopbotted structure is a current contender for this years Solar Decathlon in Europe.
The oldest Fablab is in Pabel, India, and focusses on agricultural education. Here you can see Yogesh Kulkarni with biofuel cells and a biofuel composter.
Here you see Kipp Bradford from the board of directors of the Providence based AS220 lab testing the Vigyan Ashram lab’s solar cooker (and learning that hot things are hot).
A cycle powered drip irrigator and a 2000 dollar tractor!
And here Bamboo greenhouse– none of these projects are based on the Fablab, but the Fablab houses the tools that help make them.
These are photos I took this summer at the Jaipur Foot Organisation. I’m currently working with them and a team of MIT undergrads as part of d-lab’s Developing World Prosthetics class.
We have funding from MISTI to explore rapid prototyping possibilities for prosthetics. We are currently working on children’s prosthetics in particular.
Fabfi is a project that originated in the Fablab Jalalabad, Afghanistan. There is one big satellite downlink, but not a lcoal infrastructure to get the internet around. So they designed these directional antennas for linksys routers to beam internet around to the places they needed it.
Keith Berkoben showed the routers to people in India and Afghanistan and now they are all able to make these en mass on their own.
After they got annoyed with material and the design, they were able to make their own antenna with the same basic principles and unsaid oil cans! Their antenna was only a few dBs off from the original design.
There’s been we’ve been talking a lot with different people who can be stakeholders for a Fablab in Haiti. Without people to support it, the machines in the Fablab are useless. We started a blog about our efforts and accepting donations for the Fablab.
Unless otherwise noted, photos in the slides by Keith Berkoben, Kenny Cheung, Nadya Peek or Amy Sun.
Pecha Kucha for Haiti Reconstruction
February 17th, 2010Pecha Kuchas are collections of short talks to quickly introduce the audience to a variety of subjects. The Center for Future Civic Media and Architecture for Humanity Boston are hosting a Pecha Kucha on Haiti relief and reconstruction. We’ll be there presenting the Haiti Fablab project, so we hope you can make it.
Saturday February 20th, 8pm, MIT Media Lab Extension
http://pechakuchaboston15.eventbrite.com/
Round table with MA State Reps Marie St-Fleur & Linda Dorcena Forry, Dr. Marc Zissman, Paul Altidor, Dean Steve Lerman
February 17th, 2010
From left to right: MA State Reps Marie St-Fleur & Linda Dorcena Forry, Dean Steve Lerman, Dr. Marc Zissman, Paul Altidor
Marie St. Fleur: Haiti is in disarray, and its government is not functioning well. It is not only not functioning because of the massive earthquake that has just hit, but because before, funding aid in Haiti has categorically favoured NGOs, leaving the government as secondary in providing help to the citizens. NGOs cannot deal with large scale infrastructure problems the way governments can. The government is not functioning the way it should, and the Haitian government, the Haitian economy and Haitian education needs to start fortifying themselves if this is going to get any better.
http://krikkrak.media.mit.edu/lectureseries#feb17
Design of a Haitian Village by Haiti FabLab Collaborator Gerthy Lahens and MIT Architecture Professor Jan Wampler
February 17th, 2010Gerthy Lahens and MIT professor Jan Wampler are working on a project to design a small, self-sufficient village in Arcahaie, Haiti. The village is designed with rebuilding Haitian education in mind.
From Boston.com: Jan Wampler (left), an MIT professor of architecture, and lead organizer Gerthy Lahens explain details of their Haiti project. (Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff)
From MIT President Susan Hockfield’s Letter to the Community:
Architecture professor Jan Wampler is designing a small, self-sufficient settlement consisting of a school and housing for 350 Haitian students and 100 staff. The settlement, conceived for a region about one hour from Port-au-Prince, will be carried out in coordination with local Haitian organizations, engineers and contractors, and can also serve as a model for use across Haiti.
Gerthy Lahens has been helping us with finding stakeholders in Haiti who will take ownership of the Fablab. Fablabs cannot just be plopped down and then take off: they require people more than machines to work. We are still looking for stakeholders who can take ownership, if you know someone, please contact us!
Haiti Relief Round Table Discussion with MA State Reps. Marie St. Fleur and Linda Dorcena Forry
February 16th, 2010The unprecedented challenges facing Haiti after the earthquake on January 12 invite us to analyze foundational aspects of Haitian society as rebuilding projects are being put in place to restore virtually every single component of the country’s infrastructure—physical, health-related educational, socio-economic, political, etc.
This round table, with Massachusetts State Representatives Marie P. St. Fleur and Linda Dorcena Forry (both of whom are Haitian-American), and Prof. Steven Lerman, Vice Chancellor and Dean of Graduate Education will explore the anticipated contributions of research universities in Haiti’s rebuilding efforts and how these contributions will bear on these universities’ traditional missions of research and teaching. Both state representatives represent districts in Boston and have been instrumental as leaders in working with the Haitian community and the Mayor’s office to support the local Haitian community in Boston.
The round table will be moderated by Dr. Dale Joachim and will take place at 2:00pm, Wednesday, February 17th in the Bartos Theatre at the Media Lab (E15-070). All are welcome.
