So, I've been working for the last 12 years in developing country post-disaster work and

also in the maker movement. How many people here know what a maker space is, the maker movement? A good majority. Maker movement, the maker space is where a lot of our new innovations are coming from, where a lot of the new ways of doing things, a lot of the things that you see on Kickstarter, things like this.

People think of maker spaces and the maker movement as a lot of digital things, and I like to look at it in a different way, and around in a maker space, you have a lot of participation. And it's something that in my 12 years of working within the humanitarian sector across the globe, something that I've seen has been really, really lacking within almost

all humanitarian work, and that is participation. And that's kind of where the word dignity ties in a little bit. How can you have dignity in a process? How can you be a part of something if you're not participating within it? Well, to start out with some boring slides, this one shows basically the request

for funding for most of the humanitarian work that's been happening globally. Now, the gray area is, the orange area is the request, the need for funding to meet these humanitarian needs we're seeing globally. The gray area is the part that has not been met. And as you can see, this is growing increasingly, increasingly.

Now, 12 years in humanitarian disaster relief work, and I'm just starting to get involved into what's probably going to become one of the largest crisis in our time, in our lifetimes, is displaced people. People, whether it be political, economic, climate change, is going to be one of the

largest humanitarian issues in our lifetime. To give you an idea, you can kind of read the numbers here and see the 10% increase in just one year time. Apologies for the acronym.

40.8 million IDPs, those are internally displaced people. Those are people that are displaced within their own countries. And then refugees, I'm sure most of us know what refugees are. So we're getting into the area to where almost one in a hundred people are displaced from their community, from their home, from their country.

And those numbers are predicted to escalate quite, quite rapidly. My thank you. Now, back to how does the maker movement tie into this? The maker movement is something that's been escalating, climbing, growing almost

as quickly as the humanitarian crises globally have been. Last year, there was an estimated 4,000-plus different types of maker spaces, innovation spaces globally, and they are popping up all over the place. So this goes back a little bit to where I'm just going to be a little bit blunt here.

Again, the biggest thing in 12 years of doing this work that I've seen in the lack of the humanitarian sector and the way this humanitarian work is done is the lack of participation. For those of you that have been a part of the maker movement or been a part of a maker space at Do It Yourself, an innovation lab that has a bunch of different names, a co-working space, an incubator, they are all about participation.

And when people get involved, that's when you start to see these real beauties, this real innovation come out. So the way that we're going to, like, address these global issues as they're coming is not this top-down humanitarian sector. We're not going to raise the funds in order to meet all these humanitarian needs globally.

It's really looking at the people that we're all working towards and having them become participants within the process of humanitarian work. To bring it back a little bit to something that I think just about everybody can understand, it's something that I've always looked at because I also come from a history of event production.

Now, there's this one really great event called Burning Man. How many people here have heard of Burning Man? That's a good percentage. So Burning Man is a really different festival because it is put on by the participants. The one, the photo on the right is a typical music festival. I believe it's called Bonnaroo. And this has a lot to do with kind of the beneficiary.

The humanitarian sector calls the recipients of humanitarian aid beneficiaries very top-down. It's dependent on what it is that the organization can provide, and then they look at the people that they're working for as the beneficiaries. We really like to look at it as participants.

And here's the difference. Burning Man is put on by the participants. And that's the end result. People are involved in the design, the facilitation of, and the production of that event. This is how the event's left. This is actually a public shaming photo that's one of the worst left areas, one of the worst left camps out there. On the right is a typical music festival.

So it kind of gives you some idea of what the difference is that I've seen in participation versus beneficiary. So what do we do with all this? This is after I worked for other organizations for, I believe, five, six years, and then kind of really saw this gap in all this very top-down,

not involving the people that we were there to be working for. There are decisions made behind closed doors overseas. There are budgets pre-decided without ever talking to the people that this money was getting spent on. So we opened up this after the earthquake in Haiti, what was that, seven, eight years ago.

We decided, what if we opened up a space? And this is also looking back at the gap and how it is that there is going to be a lack of funding. There already currently is a lack of funding within all these humanitarian needs that we need to address. A lot of that funding is spent on resources, whether that's food, tools, equipment, space, vehicles, aircraft, all these sort of things.

We saw a lack of people sharing, the humanitarian actors, the beneficiaries, or the participants, the businesses, the government sharing resources. Everybody was kind of grabbing after these resources. The expenses go skyrocket after a disaster, after a humanitarian crisis. So we opened up a space in Port-au-Prince called a Resource Center

with a simple concept of what if we just provide a lot of these resources that are in need by both the humanitarian actors, the government, the businesses, but especially the beneficiaries or the people enabling them to become a participant in their own future. So this, again, has all been disaster relief thus far.

So this is Haiti. It's a space that's still running seven years later. We have a shared workshop where you don't need to go buy a hammer. Imagine a hammer getting used by a hundred different organizations. That's really lowering that overhead and closing that gap of the cost of the humanitarian work. Storage units, conference room, computer, 3D printing lab, art center

is really part of tying it back into the dignity. A lot of humanitarian organizations really look at those base needs, food, water, shelter, medicine, and these are really important things. Absolutely, but unfortunately, the first thing on the chopping board when it comes to a budget is that human dignity.

What are the human elements of somebody that's just been affected by a disaster, somebody that's displaced out of their community, a refugee, somebody that's seeking asylum? The arts and the participation really contribute a lot into that, and it turns out what we found is that that really actually lowers the overhead of operating.

This place has also become a whole living lab, is what we call it, to where a lot of new technologies, people look at closing that gap in the humanitarian sector, the funding gap, as we need more innovation. Absolutely, we need more new technologies, new ways of doing things, and I think for us, the biggest thing is the new way of doing things

is involving the people themselves. This was seven years ago. We also do a mobile resource center, actually bringing these tools and resources out into the rural communities of Haiti. This is our calm beat bus. It's kind of like a mobile maker space. We did the same thing in the Philippines following the typhoon,

very similar, yet quite different at the same time. Workshop, training hall, computer lab, 3D printing lab, we added a co-working space. A lot of the small organizations are literally fighting over office space as you have a sudden influx of organizations coming into a post-disaster zone.

You have a sudden influx, and it skyrockets all the rates. Why don't we share this resource? Arts Craft Center, here's a really great example of literally giving the tools to the people and how much larger of an effect that can have. After a second typhoon in the Philippines,

we had all these tools and resources in our maker space, in our workshop, in our tool lending library, and we drove vehicles directly into the epicenter of the second typhoon. It took us a couple of thousand dollars and a staff of two to distribute thousands of tools to the beneficiaries or them becoming the participants themselves,

and it had a larger effect than anybody would have expected with a very low overhead. And there was a lot of pride and a lot of dignity in that process of the people rehabilitating their own communities. This is an interesting one because a large organization, which will remain unnamed,

gave us a bunch of funding to create a city youth center. They had a high STD problem, and they said, within the street youth in the city of Tacloban, and they said, OK, could you guys build a youth center to where we can do training, testing, things like this? And we said, sure, but we need a certain amount of a budget

in order to involve all of the kids themselves in what this youth center might look like. Now, this large organization had, their mission was to decrease the amount of STDs, things like this, sexually transmitted diseases, and we said, OK, but we need a certain amount of budget in order to actually involve the kids in this process,

so we're not just developing and designing something from afar and dropping it into this community. Believe it or not, that was the first thing to go on the chopping block of that budget to build out this entire thing, and we really went back and forth. They finally improved the design process budget, and this, I'm happy to say, this center ended up becoming a reproductive health clinic,

vocational training, and a skate park because that's what the kids wanted, and within day one of opening that center, that center is still very active, very alive, because those kids had that equity in the process. We really, in the Philippines, we learned quite a bit

about involving people in the design of the humanitarian projects that are happening in their communities, and the design thinking workshop, human-centered design, things like this, so after the Nepal earthquake, before we even chose to set up Nepal Communitaire, is Bahar here?

I don't think she is. Bahar, I don't know if anybody heard her talk. She's the main driving force between Nepal Communitaire. I highly recommend finding her, but we really set a new standard in that before we even decided to deploy our humanitarian organization, we would go in and talk and meet with the community, and whatever it is that we did would actually be designed by them,

and this changed the whole way. It took us four years to go from Haiti to the Philippines. It took us two years to go from the Philippines to Nepal, and it took us a year before Nepal was able to stand on its own, and that has everything to do from what you do on day one,

involving everybody that you're really working for in that process. We look at three equities, design equity, decision-making equity, and sweat equity. There was that. This is now Nepal today. This is a co-working private office space centered in Kathmandu. This is the maker space out back.

This is inside the maker space. I believe this space actually has since become... I haven't been there in a while, but Bahar has been running and doing an amazing job. I think that's since become a second-story building. The need for space, the uniqueness within it has really created quite a drive there. They've done a fantastic job. This is inside the workshop,

providing the means for people to do what they need to do. We also did the first Maker Faire in Nepal. It was also the first Maker Faire focused on humanitarian technologies and this kind of do-it-yourself within the humanitarian sector. This takes me, again, 12 years

in developing country post-disaster work. No experience in refugee work. One of the largest crises that's facing us. We were fortunate enough to be observed by what's called the American Refugee Committee and they offered us a grant. They said, hey, can you guys make this jump? We had been talking about it for years and we recognize that this is a huge jump.

The refugee crisis is probably larger than most of the natural disasters combined. I've just gotten back from the last month in Greece, which tends to be a hot spot for a lot of this. It's the gateway to the Balkans. We'll get back to Greece here in a little bit.

We've spent the last month designing with the grassroot organizations that are there, the government, the end beneficiaries, everybody and it's turned into this entire series of design workshops. There have been a lot of things that have come out of that. We thought, after 12 years of doing this type of work, of course, we've got a really good idea.

We can go in, we can decide the budget ahead of time, we can figure out what we're going to do, what's going to be best. We were really wrong on a lot of different things. This process is really important and this is one of the first organizations that has really seen the value in this process. A large UN organization actually offered us to come and do the same project.

We said, okay, but we're going to need this much of a budget in order for the design process. That didn't make sense. They wanted to know what the budget was going to be for the next six months before we even put feet on the ground. This is actually from about a week ago. This is yesterday where we've been having these regular groups between Greeks,

refugees, businesses. The municipality of Thessaloniki is absolutely amazing. I'm going to come back to that in just a second. The design over these workshops that we're looking at doing is actually creating a mobile makerspace. The real difference that we've seen in creating a makerspace in a developing country

or in a post-disaster zone is a lot of that need is going to be quite stationary. The best thing I've heard in working within the refugee situation is design for impermanence. Everybody is in constant movement. It's a real challenge because we're working with about 60,000 refugees in Greece

that really want to rather be here. There isn't, like working in Port-au-Prince, people realize they're going to be in Port-au-Prince. They're going to have their kids in Port-au-Prince, so they very quickly start working for themselves and bettering their lives whereas the refugee situation is really quite a bit different. We've actually been designing around

impermanence and that transition so that we're not coming spending a lot of money and developing something that as the need moves, we're not able to move with it. It's a mobile makerspace as well as Leroy Marlin. I'm totally murdering that. It's a French Leroy Marlin. It's kind of like the Home Depot of

Europe. They've donated us this container, so we're looking at the mobile, the bus is going to be able to move throughout the country, go out to the islands as the needs arise in different areas. This is going to be more of our, this container folds out under this, what we call semi-permanent. And now as we're looking at like, we've been able to set up four resource centers in seven years.

That's not even close to enough. And in our travels, especially around Greece, we have found probably six other different groups that are looking at opening up some sort of makerspace. So we've been adjusting our model to how can we provide a short-term makerspace that really help these groups figure out A, is a makerspace needed

in their community? And what does it look like? 4,000 different makerspaces globally. There's probably 4,000 different variations of a makerspace and the technology and the participation that's within it. So we're looking, this is going to be in Thessaloniki for the next six months. And Thessaloniki is an absolutely amazing city.

It's actually the city known as the city of refugees. And it's actually the host to the next Republica. Did you guys know about that? Yes! It's going to be pretty awesome. Thessaloniki is amazing. There's a large startup culture there. It's also on the Rockefeller

Foundation's 100 Resilient Cities. There's a lot of really cool things going on there. I guess we're going to be fully set up. And I guess this is kind of an open invitation to, as we're trying to close that gap of need, participation, and lack of funding, it's kind of an open invitation to where exactly how we're going to

address the globe's needs in the next 10, 20, 30, 50 years, it's going to involve a lot more participation by the people that are the beneficiaries, by groups like yourself, by groups like Republica. This made me really happy to see. So hopefully we'll see some of you in Thessaloniki.

September, anybody? Yeah. It's in September. We'll be there. We ask you guys to really come participate. This center is literally going to be just a few miles from where the next Republica will be. I think there's Dublin and then Thessaloniki. And I think that's about it. To keep track,

this is the name of our organization, by the way. Sorry. I don't know how many of you have Facebook on your phones, but if you want to keep track as we're launching into this refugee situation and want to keep track of what's going on, please follow us on whatever form of social media. And I've got eight minutes.

Any questions? Well, I see some maker movement people in the room, so I'm sure they have some questions.

Hi. I work at UNDP in Mexico, and I've been taking these design thinking courses, and then I was just wondering if you managed to solve the challenges within working with the UN, because I just right now

don't see how design thinking techniques could work with the structures from UN. That's a really good question. We work with several different UN agencies, and everybody's needed. So we try to say, I mean, in my mind,

every organization on the planet Earth, especially Communitaire, can get a lot better at what they're doing. I do think the design thinking workshops are the way to do so. The thing that's really hard with large organizations that I've talked to and have found is that there's a lack of being able to show the results. So when you do a design thinking workshop, how do you show that

result? When you build a house, you can say, Donor, I built this house. We saw this many patients. We fed this many people. But when there's that dignity, that participation, it's a very hard metric to measure and to report back to the donor in doing. I think what we're really close to getting to is actually showing the cost

benefits. So that's where we're kind of looking at the maker spaces and participating, involving the people that we're working with, actually showing that cost benefit. I think that's just around the corner. In the meantime, I think the best way is to say that it doesn't hurt. Organizations actually spend a lot of money going and doing assessments,

and there are people in jackets going out with a clipboard and asking questions. And the design thinking workshops are an incredible opportunity, cost saving opportunity, to bring everybody to you and to get a lot of these answers answered without having to go out. So there's a bit more

research to be done, but I'd say the cost saving benefits are the best way to change the minds of larger organizations.

Hi, Sam. My name is Samir and I work for German Development Cooperation. And one thing that is always very important with government donors is looking at how an initiative can also contribute to income generation and promote

employment, which is already difficult enough in a refugee context due to restrictions and entering the labor market. Is this an area that your organization is working in? Do you have any insights on that or lessons learned or ideas? Yeah.

In Greece, it's very difficult. And again, it's not like somebody in Berlin to where this is where they're settling down. So out of some of the design workshops we've really been asked is for training that will provide employment in their next location. In the meantime, a lot of the trainings and a lot of the activities

are things that are bettering their current living situation. But a lot of the things in the 3D printing and the digital arts are what's being really requested because they know that this is a booming market, especially in the places like Berlin or London, things like that. Does that answer your question? It's varied.

You'd be surprised how many and really opening up as to what type of vocational training the refugees want opens up. They know. They totally know. They know where they want to be. They want to know what their best opportunity of getting a job is there. They know what their best chance is of getting a job in the country they're currently in. They know. So really leaving it up to

them helps answer a lot of those questions. On that note, do you have any data set about what that information looks like? Is this from conversations or do you have

is this recorded somewhere? Synthesizing the data from the design workshops in Greece is something we're currently doing. It's tricky because a lot of people wish to remain unanimous. But no, that is something that we are for the first time. Well, in the Philippines was the first

time we did a design thinking workshop that was very specific for that project. In Nepal, it was kind of like, let's really build the organization around this human centered design design thinking. We did a horrible job at documenting it. We now have full time staff that are documenting the process in Greece. And in Greece we were looking at doing three design thinking workshops. This was our

preconceived idea coming in from California. We'll do three of these different demographics halfway into the first design workshop that turned into probably 12 design workshops. So there is now a lot of energy put into documenting that process being recorded. Very tricky with who's in the room.

Yes, absolutely. And it takes a lot of time and a lot of energy. But I think that that's something that we're really putting that time and energy into so that this methodology does get adopted by organizations. I think a lot of people are working this way, but not documenting from beginning until end. It's very hard for the larger institutions to adopt it.

So, yes. Not quite what I was asking actually, but it is very helpful. Sorry if I wasn't clear. More what I meant was you were talking about people knowing what kind of skills they're interested in picking up through these makerspace trainings because they have this sense of they know where they want to go and where these jobs are available. That is something that I'm particularly interested in because of my

work and ways that I think I can funnel some of that work towards you if I had that information. More than happy to share that information. There's also especially in introducing these technologies, introducing a makerspace into these environments, there's a part of people know what they want and there's a part of

they don't know what's available until you provide it to them. And as long as you're wanting to come and provide something that they don't know if they want or not, as long as you're completely willing to send a trainer and let's do this training and nobody does it and show up then let's do it. Absolutely.

More questions? Silence and press. You guys, thank you so much. Thank you.