The Terre des hommes Foundation has opened a FabLab in Târgu Ocna, where access is granted for approximately 100 young people from the local Education Centre, students from the Technological High School and the Agent Training School. Now the teenagers will use the space in order to create protective masks for themselves and the local community.
The FabLab "Leap to the Future" created within the local High School has an educational purpose and has been received from Tdh modern technological equipment, such as 3D printers and scanners, car mechanic equipment, digital embroidery machines or cutter plotters. The aim is for most of these young people to learn to use them and later find jobs in related fields (the automotive, medical and food industries). Young people especially in the Educational Centre, who are between 14 and 23 years old, need this advantage to help them reintegrate after their release.
Initially, the FabLab was created by the Terre des hommes Foundation as part of a larger project to rehabilitate and reintegrate minors in educational or detention centers, but the concept was extended to students at the local High School of Technology and those at the Agent Training School.
After learning to operate embroidery machines, FabLab students will create several hundred protective masks for themselves and their colleagues -- young people deprived of their freedom, respectively students -- but also for teachers from the three educational institutions.
In total, by the end of 2020, approximately 100 children and young people (between 14 and 23 years old) will benefit from this project. The groups of students from the three categories will be organized separately for their courses, and in the hall, they will not have access to more than 10 people simultaneously, to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
FabLab Leap to the Future was funded by Fondation Botnar (Switzerland).
