MindSpace

In a technology-driven world, why is 80% of young Kenyan below 35 years unemployed, the same trend cuts across Africa, the highest proportion of the unemployed is between the ages of 20 and 24 and 25 and 29. We seek to bridge the prevalent skill mismatch gap that perpetuates unemployment by availing critical Do-it-Yourself (DIY) and Do-it-With-Others (DIWO) culture for innovation.

MindSpace targets students and young adults, by equipping them through use of Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, And Mathematics (STEAM), to this end we shift them from being job seekers to job creators, for socio-economic transformation. Similarly, we link students to support networks key for successful conversion.

MindSpace is driven on the need to drive value from the demographic dividend across Africa, by availing prototyping machines for min-manufacturing hubs. We use of Human Centered Design (Design Thinking) tool to facilitate the process.

MindSpace has observed a need for student tailored maker-spaces, that can be moved from school to school in rural in Kenya. About 43% (706 million) have no internet at home in Sub-Sahara, the problem of unemployment coupled with pandemic has proven that is there need to bridge the skill-mismatch especially in terms of digital inclusion.

In sub-Saharan Africa, 89% of students do not have access to household computers and 82% lack internet access. MindSpace provides students and young adults with an affordable option to attain socio-economic empowerment key to transiting from Idea to workable solution, so that they can be proud of who they are, explore and prepare for a career of their choice, attain basic digital-skills, life-skills, including prototyping, and participate problem solving in their community.

Being a mobile FabLab we seek challenge the notion of education for the sake of it. As of now, our challenge aims to purchase the truck and subsequent fabrication of it, into fully functional FabLab, and to purchase machines to be fitted within the truck. MindSpace targets 500,000+ students by 2030.

MindSpace are functionally designed mobile fabricator Laboratories tailored for schools in rural Kenya. These are equipped with prototyping machines, from CNC Milling, 3D Printer, Laser-cutting Machine, Electronic Workbench Area, Drills, Vacuum Forming Machine, Vinyl Cutter, internet, Adobe software, soldering station with which students are aided by facilitators to co-create. MindSpace turns the school into a technological hub see https://fabfoundation.fablabbc...all this at convenience their learning environment.

MindSpace is driven by the need to tackle the rampant unemployment due to lack of access to requisite machines and skills. With an annual transition rate of over 750,000 students to university and over 500,000 into the job market annually MindSpace is on time.

MindSpace goes against the grain by taking FabLab from fancy cities, to those who really need them. We believe in learning by doing, and transforming schools into watersheds hubs for accelerated innovation and thus spur the culture of job creation. The FabLab uses Human Centered Design (Design Thinking), to hone in the solution making ability. Ours is a tested solution: however, we need funding to customize it into a unique mobile FabLab to best serve all schools.

MindSpace works with rural public and schools in slums. The schools that MindSpace serve are disadvantaged and have been left behind on many frontiers. With MindSpace Mobile FabLab, we are moving the rural and slum students beyond the prevalent notion of “education for the sake of it” to the place where the students can become active problem solvers. We enable the students to learn skills that are relevant for the 21st century, thereby making them globally competitive through mastery of Science, Technology, Engineering, Art & Mathematics (STEAM).

By adopting the doing by learning, the students will become smarter and develop skills that will enable them to create meaningful employment, therefore lift them from living below a dollar. Ideas rule the world! but truth be told the disadvantaged have tended to be overlooked in terms of harnessing their ideas. MindSpace comes on the heel that all children should be able to access quality education and enhance their technical knowledge.

Through exposure to systems like Arduino, basic technical skills in Laser Cutters, 3D printers etc. The Design Thinking aspect of MindSpace uses the student’s sensibility and methods to match their needs with what is technologically feasible and what a viable business strategy can convert into customer value and market opportunity. training build their Inspiration, ideation, and implementation. Apart from the doing aspect students will be trained on basic computer programming.

Unemployment and skill-mismatch are perpetuated by the lack of ability to organize what is there into ideas with real world impact. As such schools in rural and slum areas have tended to be limited in their ability to make students into job creators. MindSpace is challenging the notion that, schools are mere portal of information, without capacity to build real world solutions. MindSpace brings the world of experience to the students and works with them within their school setting to gain relevant skills, build and scale on provable real world solutions.

We have chose the Prototype stage in order to determine how users behave towards our solution, to reveal how the user group will respond to this new way of tackling unemployment and skill-mismatch. This will also help us measure the success level of the project and thus forecast the future. The results generated from this stage will be used to redefine one or more of the problems established as the project moves forward, and build a more robust understanding of how the target user may desire the project to work in order to best serve their needs within their learning environment. The stage is also chosen because Mobile FabLabs are new in Kenya, actually MindSpace will be pioneering, but we have studies from success stories that have effectively deployed, tested, and have a tested business model that is sustainable and can be easily replicated to suit our context.

What makes MindSpace so innovative is its capacity to fight poverty by reducing unemployment rate across Kenya and Beyond. It flexibility serving multiple users within their context and at the same time turning these contexts into tech-hubs where anything can be easily ideated, prototyped and tested.  Students are encouraged to explore their inborn creativity and talent to drive mean-making in close collaboration with fellow students and the wider community. We also enable students to remain on track with their studies by working with mentors who emphasis the need for being all-rounded people in the digital age. We believe in learning that produces, and blended with sustainable economic transformation anchored on the culture of DO-IT-YOURSELF (DIY) and DO-IT-WITH-OTHER (DIWO) and encourages hands-on education. Having an emphasis on science, technology, engineering, art and Mathematics (STEAM) our curriculum clears supplements the recently introduced competence based curriculum in Kenya.

Our solution has through Human Centered Design has in collaboration with other stakeholders has served about 2000 youths. We intend to serve about 20,000 students and young adults in the next one year. our projection is to maintaining a steady curve for the first three years as away of providing workable and scalable solutions. Once we have established a refined technique, we will open it up to hundreds, even thousands of students.

MindSpace being a mobile FabLab on wheels means it will cover more schools by collapsing the proximity barrier. To this effect out indicator of success will range from the number of FabLabs launched to serve different counties across Kenya. secondly the number of schools served by each FabLab will also be an important indicator. Similarly, the number of enterprises established as a result of the FabLabs will be key in measuring our works long term impact. all this not withstanding, the number of jobs created will be fundamental basing that we are established on the premise of fighting unemployment and poverty. All this can be summed up as follows: Our project will drive global partnership in terms of skills transfer from our partners, enable access to quality education that can empower the users to create opportunities out of the problems around them. This will equally reduce inequalities knowing that our solution will target schools in rural areas and in slums.

Two full time staff

2 contractors

Each of our team member has seen what unemployment can do to young people.To this end out teams is not just qualified on the basis of its technical and educational basis but on their passion to create change. We have well positioned facilitators capable of creating and developing innovative solutions. The team has vast experience in corporate and not-for-profit fields, as such administration and leadership are skills well tested within the team.

MindSpace is built on the philosophy of equality, inclusion and humane culture that brings the best out of each person within our collective body of operation. To this effect the project works on ensuring that not less than three quarter of our end users are girls and people living with disability. This will be done prior to our visit to schools, where special slots will be left for the aforementioned group of persons.

MindSpace is applying to solver to get the initial funds needed to make unemployment and poverty a thing of the past through training and access to prototyping and min-manufacturing machines with which students girls, women and young adults can become job creators. All we cannot do alone, we need partnership to amplify the impact.

If our solution is selected: We will need trainers, mentors, coaching, and strategic advice from experts, as well as the Solve and MIT networks; to advise us on our solution and provide support. With Solver assistance we look forward to having accessing relevant in-kind resources such as software licenses and legal services from Solve Member and partner organizations. 

We are an organization that believes in continuous learning, our exposure to MIT Solver network will assist us understand how our context can be learnt and best practices adopted to from pioneers of Fab Labs.

In order for the project to successful, we need talented and experienced partnership. These partnerships help enrich our ability to scale down on innovation, and expose the end users to develop their pitching skills.

MindSpace would like to partner with:-MIT Solvers,initiative, Faculty or any of  above who is willing to work with us. we would like to partner with IDEO in the delivery of design thinking aspect of the project and training of our facilitators. In addition to that our partnership organization will also help us with the strategy how to get funds needed to accomplish our goal.

Africa and East Africa in particular host many refugees from both within and without. Kenya for instance has tens of thousands of refugees. Most of these people tend to be secluded from participating as economic agents to their communities. With MindSpace we can traverse through various refugee camps training and allow the youths to drive solutions to their problems from by using human centered design. This will not only empower them economically but to also become agents of transforming their circumstances into value making. MindSpace comes to them and works with them in their contexts.