What is the Mobile Fablab

Why this project?

Ho Chi Minh city, Danang and Hanoi are all big cities. Our mission is innovation literacy and we want to reach out to smaller cities in Vietnam. Especially, we want to show kids’ throughout Vietnam that digital fabrication can help make their dreams come true.

The mobile fablab project is about packing our tools and knowledge into a truck, and going for a tour in Vietnam, in order to empower kids from the local communities by turning them into makers and entrepreneurs.

What?

In each city, we will run a 48h “Maker to entrepreneur” Bootcamp, with about 20 to 30 kids, aged from 14 to 18 years old (9th to 12th grade). We want challenges that are locally relevant. So the topic in each city will be determined by the kids themselves as we call for challenges and participants with the help from local partners. As a proof of concept, Fablab Saigon has already run a 48h Bootcamp with children in Saigon, during which the participants came out with great realisations.

We will document the challenges on our website and call to the wider community to brainstorm on solutions. During the bootcamp, kids will leverage the contribution of the community and learn to ideate solutions in teams, design products, and digitally fabricate them.

At the end of the bootcamp, our team and tools will move on to the next city. At this stage our goal isn’t to build a fablab in each city. In the near future, we believe that each city will build their own fablab with a strong local community.

What we want to achieve in each city are the “one can make almost anything” mindset, seeds for innovation and for these seeds to grow, the connection to the network of fablabs around the world.

When?

Our target is to run the first mobile fablab from the 4th to 13th of July for the first 3 towns. We are currently calling for challenges and local partners in each target cities.