A Maker’s Mission

(Photograph courtesy of The Neil Squire Society, and used with permission.)

For Makers Making Change Project Manager Zee Kesler, making and empowerment just naturally go together.

Zee's work with the maker community includes spearheading Vancouver's Maker Education Initiative.  She is also the co-founder of "Curiosity in the Classroom", a maker club for sixth-graders.  And she's been the lead on numerous mobile maker workshop projects--including the 2012 "Maker Mobile Workshops on Wheels".

And now, she'd like to empower you--to get involved in making a difference.

Makers Making Change, an initiative of nonprofit Neil Squire Society, recruits maker volunteers.  The goal: to create low-cost assistive technology for people with disabilities.

in the Makers Making Change archive are more than fifty open-source projects. These include a wheelchair-mounted dog treat dispenser; a Braille keyboard overlay; and an adaptive bottle opener, for people with arthritis.

There's also the LipSync, Makers Making Change's flagship creation, which is a mouth-controlled device to operate a touchscreen!

So, what do they need?  As far as maker volunteers go, they welcome anyone who has the time to help.  Projects can be as simple as 3D printing out a device--or as involved as building a LipSync.

And they invite anyone with a disability to reach out and request a maker's help, to create an assistive device.

Makers Making Change has done a number of events in Canada and the U.S.   They'll host a "buildathon" in San Francisco this Sunday, March 31, according to their website.  And they're headed to Toronto, for the Abilities Expo, happening April 5-7!
On this edition of Over Coffee®, you will hear:

How the maker community first captured Zee's imagination;

How she first became involved with the Neil Squire Society;

A description of Makers Making Change (in case you missed our 2017 interview with Neil Squire Society Director of Development Chad Leaman:

What are some of the top devices people request to have created by makers;

Several ways anyone interested can get involved and help;

A number of upcoming events;

How to get a presentation in your community!

Methods of "hacking" toys, to adapt them for children with disabilities;

A suggestion for makers who are into creating with textiles;

An exciting upcoming maker-education project on which Makers Making Change is working!

What Makers Making Change will need, in the area of help on theirnew project;

What Zee learned about the maker community, during her work with Makers Making Change.