Have your community activities changed during the last several months?

Please summarize your efforts

We were setting up and arranging to become a new chapter in Italy when we started to have pandemic problems, so this activity itself was strongly delayed. Italy was one for the first regions hit hard with cases, an overwhelmed healthcare system, and lockdown. We did successfully become a chapter but in April.

As a consequence of the pandemic, we suspended our partnership with another foundation (Give Me An Hand) in January/February to build aesthetic rehabilitation arms for children in Vietnam and Nepal. We had hoped to deliver devices by the end of March, and instead were heavily involved in the design and engineering of pandemic solutions.

@Riccardo Prezioso is a member of our team and the main designer of the COVID Mask (For more info, check the post here). He worked on this during the past months with the help of two FABLAB members (Carlo Masgoutiere from Modena and Alessio Lo Scrudato in Sicily) and a Volunteer in Turin (Paolo). He has coordinated, they have printed and delivered about 180 printed masks to the workers of 10 nursing homes, firemen, policeman and several social health workers (mainly distributed in Bergamo’s district). @michele praga, another proud member of e-Nable Italia, also printed and donated 400 face shields to hospitals and medical professionals.

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  (For more info from @Alberto Navatta about the chapter, check his introduction post!)

What are the current needs of your community?

What are the current needs for your chapter and activities?

At present time we are slowly returning to a kind of new “commonness” or new normal. We are rearranging and reorganizing delayed activities and we’re restarting the original plan. We hope in few weeks we’ll be fully operative and we can launch the chapter activity, starting to build devices for the families: we’ve not given great visibility and prominence to the chapter itself and to chapter activity till now because even if we think just at the Energy Family Project community, it is quite large (we have more than 450 persons in the group with hundreds of families), and we had to be prepared to support them with any mean.

During this period Chapter volunteers have worked hard to acquire experience in building and validating devices, I think the times are ripe to start working for real and I hope we’ll be up to the task ahead of us.

Have you received promotional filament to support your efforts?

How have you used these materials?

A big thank you to Stefano Ala, CEO and Founder of 4DoItaly, a leading company that produces 3d printers and distributes filaments. Stefano was directly involved with @Riccardo Prezioso in the design of the COVID Mask and he provided biocompatible skin filament used to print part of the mask.

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

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

With respect to collaboration in particular I want to mention Francesca Albano, a biomedical engineer, that is helping us in several activities and whose help was so precious during this period, William Amighetti, President of Give Me An Hand Foundation, that has organized all the logistic for the distribution of the masks in the Bergamo district (Bergamo was classified “restricted red zone” for Covid19 due to the higher incidence of the virus contagion) and for having financed the project.