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MakerNet is an initiative providing systems and tools that connect makers and makerspaces to local markets and manufacturing infrastructure. While the pilot program took place in Nairobi in November of 2016, since then MakerNet has had a number of exciting projects and initiatives.
What is Field Ready's involvement in MakerNet? As one of the partners, we work on in-country programs, designing and manufacturing humanitarian supply items which are appropriate and delivered more quickly and more cheaply than the alternatives. We have demonstrated that this is possible in a few countries so far, using various manufacturing techniques and by making a range of item types identified by local practitioners.
In the past year, MakerNet and Field Ready have been working on an initiative supported by Cisco Foundation, GIZ and IBM.
Here is an executive summary by Naiomi Lundman of Humanitarian Makers and Ana Sera Lowe from MakerNet:
This project built lean and iterative MVPs and furthered partnership development towards a sustainable digital humanitarian production system. It had the goal to develop online platforms to make humanitarian supply production better, faster and cheaper. This project undertook various strategies to do this:
-Analyzing, developing and iterating design file sharing platform(s) to better understand item and user requirements (previously referred to as “Makepedia”)
-Piloting an item testing engagement to advance items towards a usable and reliable stage
-Analyzing marketing efforts to understand and grow engagement
-Conducting interviews to explore three systems proposed to help agencies buy from local manufactures in countries and communities where they work (referred to as “Makernet”)
To read the full report here.