What am I doing this week 08.10. - 15.10.

So last week we had a virtual cafe for Serbia, in 1 hour we had time to define the workshop in Belgrade and decide on our action plan. @TamaraVuk already wrote about part and is doing a good job on that side with Milan and Tihana, they are all very engaged.

Since we didn’t have time for discussing Becej workshop, I created a Becej workgroup on facebook. Organised a new conference call via messenger and we had it yesterday.

Viktor, a guy I met at the Becej meetup last month, gave a proposal of a community project he wants to see happen. It’s a great idea so we defined it betetr and discussed how to mobilise the community around it.
His idea was to create a sort of a micro factory in the town, where the young could come and learn how to use various machines, craft things for the town and replace older or broken ones. There is a vandalism problem in Becej so he hoped this would have them feel more involved and reduce vandalism…help them realise it’s their town really.

We expanded the idea a bit, made it a creative center of sorts, with idea to include schools, get support from municipalities etc. In any case, it deserves a separate post. :slight_smile:

Results from the last night’s meeting:
-We have 2 professors from gymnasium on board already
-We decided to create a poll within the 3 high schools in the town, propose them the project and ask them basically what do they need. We will adapt the project to that and move forward with it.
-We have already received a proposal to do few workshops prior to the one in November directly in school to kids, tell them about Wellbeing in Serbia and the project
-We are now working to gather all interested stakeholders in the town for the November workshop

So, plan of our workshops in Becej is:

  1. Who are Edgeryders, what is Wellbeing in Serbia, why do the stories matter (this part should be stressed already at earlier workshops directly in schools)
  2. Theme: creativity and entrepreneurship, how to reach the point of doing things we are passionate about and live a meaningful life
  3. Present the ‘creative center’ and have an open discussion about it

About those earlier workshops directly in schools, I could do them as a local boy and would love to but in case it costs too much/takes too much time, me and @TamaraVuk will discuss it and find a solution for her to do them if possible.
One option is also to have our Becej workshop done Friday, before the Belgrade one. What do you think about that?

For the upcoming week we are focusing on getting the other two high schools on board and conducting the poll, getting the dates set for the mini workshops if we have the person to go do them.

Mobilising the community around a meaningful and useful project is getting a lot of good energy.

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As a maker and general techie, I liked that idea already when you mentioned it in the call, but didn’t find the moment to say that. So: this is a great idea! Especially if Becej does not yet have any hackerspace, makerspace, Fab Lab or repair café or similar space so far. Which, for a smaller city, is typically the case. But there’s really no reason why this concept would only work in metro cities. I think it has a lot of potential for somewhat “disconnected” cities and also rural areas.

In other news, @Yosser is in the same process of founding a hackerspace, in her case in Medenine, “the last city before the desert” :smiley: in Tunisia. We have discussed a bit about it in this other topic, and you might get some inspiration from there, and contribute your own thoughts and tips:

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Thanks for sharing Matthias, I read her story some time ago and it’s an inspirational one.
I will check it again to learn from it and share some ideas. I am doing so many things at the same time in this period that I find it hard to find more time to follow up everything I care about right now. Different priorities at this very moment since I consider we will be able to seriously move forward with the ‘creative center’ only after the festival in November at earliest.

There are many sources and experiences I can learn from. I have a maker space available in Transforma Brussels, that’s my coworking space. So I can get plenty of ideas from them. There is also a nice micro factory in Anderlecht so I will go back there as well.
There is a very nice guy from Aalst (Stijn De Mil) who did a pop up fab lab there, will see his experiences with it.

Indeed, Becej is a town of around 25 000 and doesn’t have anything similar. It is a municipality center so there are also a lot of smaller towns around it which would be affected…so many young people.

Typically, young people leave for bigger cities in Serbia or go abroad looking for opportunities but there is no reason they couldn’t create opportunities in their home town and add value to the community.
It could do a great deal in giving them valuable experiences early on and expanding their knowledge/views, it could help them realise what they will really enjoy doing in life and make smarter choices when choosing direction in higher education.

My main motivation is to break their programming and transform them from input robots into output creatives :slight_smile:. I keep finding opportunities for people feeling desperate and stuck in their ‘stale and poor environment’, most people are just not aware of the opportunities.

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Ciao Jasen :slight_smile: Can I ask you to coordinate with @anon82932460 to set up an edgeryders facebook event for this a.s.a.p - contents do not need to be perfect but we need a placeholder…

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Mogu samo kopirati sadržaj iz eventa što si već objavio vamo na platformi @jasen_lakic?

There is Superlab, not sure if that’s what you meant? We can go and visit, and I’m hoping they will come to Matthias’s workshop at the Reef on 25 November :slight_smile:

Naravno, jel treba da se cujemo za facebook Filipe?

That’s not the one but yeah, we can visit that one together.

I did an update of the post so now it is in order.

Dr. Nick is on board, which is great news. Setting him up with Inge now.

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ajde dodaj me kao frenda da te stavim za hosta

done
inace ja sam sad na Essen Spiel fest kao exhibitor tako da me nece biti do utorka vise manje