Makerspace Lesvos

For us, a Makerspace is a place where communities come together to create understanding through creativity. Learning by doing and collaborating together on tangible activities is a unifying experience here in the intense environment of Lesvos. The Makerspace Project was born on Lesvos through cooperation between multiple partners on the premises of One Happy Family, a community center for refugees and asylum seekers near the camps on Lesvos. A concept that is basically Makerspace meets Refugees Welcome, our project works on the principle of help through self-help and education. Displaced people are faced with difficult situations, especially when living in hotspots where they are waiting for their status to be determined. Lesvos is one of these places, and a succession of provisional living spaces on this island has made the need for adaptation very necessary. To cope with the situation, people here are often in need of simple solutions that work. Apart from obvious needs such as food and shelter, the need for self-reliance is often neglected and people are pushed towards a dependent lifestyle as beneficiaries. People are sometimes held in these conditions for years before their status is determined. A prolonged period of idleness in vocational training and application of professional skills is often detrimental to future job opportunities and psychological well being. At the Makerspace, people can come and apply their skills to repair and create things that they deem necessary in their own life. They can participate in projects and workshops that we offer, such as repairing bicycles to increase mobility or repairing electronic devices to improve connectivity and recover lost data.