Have your community activities changed during the last several months?

Please summarize your efforts

As we had to work from home and could not assess patients in our office we transitioned to making and donating face shields to under resourced medical units and hospitals during April and May.  Our network managed to print and deliver over 3000 face shields all over Colombia in 2 months.  One of our favourite stories was being able to deliver masks to the Amazon Jungle region of Leticia where they have been hit hard by COVID 19 as well as neonatal wards in forgotten regions.

In other news, we have rebranded and now known as Humanos3D (Previously e-NABLE Medellin).  We are still part of the enable family but have changed names for a variety of reasons including fundraising.

What are the current needs of your community?

What are the current needs for your chapter and activities?

From June we have now started working from our new workspace and are working with heads of health services in some of Colombia's hardest hit warzones.  Our target is to deliver at least 60 hands and arms to people affected by war and landmines in these areas. One of our current challenges is lack of international volunteers owing to the current covid crisis and travel restrictions.  Normally we receive dozens of international volunteers who travel from all over the globe to work with us for 2 weeks to 6 months at a time.  We currently run on a core group of 3 employees and 3 final year University engineers/designers from local universities who work 20 hours a week each with us as part of their course work.

Have you received promotional filament to support your efforts?

How have you used these materials?

No.  It wasn’t something we needed.

Have you partnered with any other chapters, groups, or organizations?

What advice can you offer for others working to contribute to their community needs?

We have partnered with dozens of local government groups, universities and disabled charities to locate people in need in Colombia. We now have over 30 people waiting for new devices which are on our production line and are likely to locate at least 100 more in the coming months.  We are also working with local businesses as well as the Australian and British Embassies which help to fund us.  Recently we landed our largest sponsorship deal with Viva Air (a Colombian airline) who have subsidised the salary of 3 of our key staff as well as enabling us to relocate to a much larger space.  We have won prizes from the local government for our work on the el medallo (kwawu bionic arm) and used the money to buy 2 more printers (bringing us to a total of 7 printers)  as well as filaments.  We have also partnered with the government innovation body to develop and launch a STEM based design and 3d printing course to underprivileged and low resourced communities.