Fab Labs are high tech resource centers that provide ordinary people access to education, equipment and materials to help them build solutions to their everyday problems, with an overall goal of growing small business from the ground up. The labs seek to develop technologies and projects organically in order to maintain a high level of relevancy to the particular experience and culture of an area, as opposed to creating in a vacuum and hoping the end result can be made applicable after the fact. In this way the labs create an actual infrastructure and skilled workforce that can advance long term improvements rather then simply handing over the keys and walking away.
The Taj Fab Lab in Afghanistan is one of 34 such labs around the world started with seed money from the National Science Foundation and sustained with the help of volunteers. As noted by Wired, with a total cost of $40,000 – not including volunteer time and security – the labs create a compelling alternative to the current model of foreign aid – much of which attempts to throw money at the problems from above. If these labs are successful in empowering change on a small scale then we expect to see similar programs being funded in the near future to address worldwide need.
[via Wired]
Read our original post here.
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