The ICRC supports a large number of people with disabilities across the world, and has active programmes in more than 40 countries. Most of these people, including thousands of children, are from low-income and rural communities. ICRC set up the Enable Makeathon to bring together humanitarians, startups, engineers, academics, makers, and people with disabilities on one platform, to co-create products suitable for scaling up and manufacturing for use across the globe.
collaboration collaboration collaboration
Usually working in partnership with the National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the ICRC provides humanitarian aid and expertise, most notably in the areas of emergency response, international humanitarian law, orthopaedic services, as well as restoration of family links, water, and habitat. The ICRC has a proven record and long history being able to reach and meet the needs of vulnerable persons in Asia.
“Enable Makeathon is a unique social movement. It brings together a multidisciplinary team of experts with persons with disability to find solutions for the real challenges that they would like to address.” Tarun Sarwal, Head of Innovation at ICRC.
The Enable Makeathon 2.0 co-creation camps recently took place in two simultaneous locations; Bengaluru, India hosted by the ICRC, and London, United Kingdom organised by the Global Disability Innovation Hub and University College London. 15 teams, selected from over 100 applications, competed against each other for grants and the opportunity to join a one-year incubator programme to further develop their solutions with support from industry leaders, mentors, and disabled people, in order to create impactful low-cost solutions with the potential for global impact. A jury selected ten teams from India and five teams from the United Kingdom to tackle 12 priority challenges related to disability issues, including access to education, access to tourism, and access to transport. Bengaluru co-creation camp attendee, Deepa Malik, who won Silver at the 2016 Summer Paralympics said, “It is important that stigma around persons with disabilities is removed. Social inclusion in every sphere of life is important to ensure that those with disabilities progress.”
A panel of judges, which included representatives from the National Institute of Design, announced the three winners at a ceremony in Delhi on 6 February 2018. Bleetech from India emerged the overall winners with their low-cost encyclopaedia for the hearing-impaired, which enables persons with hearing impairment to ask questions and receive responses in sign language using their mobile phone.
Inclusion and impact!
Jeremy England, Head of the ICRC’s Regional Delegation for Bhutan, India, Nepal, and Maldives, explained in his welcoming speech, “We’re excited about what the teams have come up with, and we can see them really making a difference with their innovative solutions. Inclusion, collaboration, and impact are at the heart of the Enable Makeathon. It is about looking for solutions with persons with disabilities”.
Team GameAble from the UK came second for their gesture recognition-based control software that enables persons with disabilities to play video games, while Team Nonspec from the United States emerged third for their light-weight, low-cost, rapidly adjustable below-knee prosthetic system.
Nonspec co-founder, Erin Keaney, explained how “there are approximately 54 million amputees worldwide”, and although the majority of them do have access to clinicians, there simply isn’t enough time or resources to provide every amputee with an appropriate assistive device. Amputees often have to wait up to two years or more to receive a custom-made prosthesis, as designing and fabricating the best possible prosthesis and socket for each amputee is incredibly time-consuming. Furthermore, the first fitting is often uncomfortable and requires the patient to repeatedly return to their clinic to continuously make adjustments until the discomfort subsides.
In response, Nonspec has developed an affordable and easily adjustable prosthetic limb kit for amputees worldwide. The team explains how they are different from existing solutions because their ‘off the shelf’ kit can be adjusted in an hour or less by a minimally trained clinician. The kit also allows the same components to be used by patients of eight years old and above, expanding as required to compensate for growth, while maintaining comfort. This unique ability to adjust the prosthetic limb’s length increases the usable life from six–eight months up to four years.
At the core of the device is a ‘pylon’ system, based on the same aerospace technology that is used in helicopter rotors. The ‘pylons’ can be adjusted to accommodate for any patient height, as well as simple daily changes, such as footwear, so that patients are no longer required to have repeated fittings or “different legs just because they switched from trainers to a nice pair of shoes”, explained Nonspec co-founder, Jonathan De Alderete. “The Enable Makeathon had two prosthetics groups, which allowed us to learn from one another and figure out ways that we can work together moving forward to meet patients’ needs.”
Nobody gets left behind
Carley Booker from the GameAble development team explained how there are over 600 000 children in the UK with fine motor control issues, preventing them from being able to play computer games with their friends. “That’s one in twenty children in the UK who can’t play computer games with their friends. Our product can help change that by turning large movements into keyboard presses, so children without fine motor control aren’t left out from play.”
25-year-old Nupura of Bleetech explained how, “one of the biggest hindrances people with hearing disabilities face on a regular basis is inaccessible knowledge.” Through their app, Nupura, Jahnavi, and Bleetech team provide answers to questions in Indian Sign Language. “The queries we receive are spread across a plethora of subjects. From general knowledge and politics to current affairs and English learning, we’re asked anything and everything,” explains Nupura. “And we ensure that we respond to every query.”
Nupura and Jahnavi are already planning their next steps: “we aim to collaborate with corporate companies across the banking, healthcare, and e-commerce sectors, and make their content accessible for our audience,” says Nupura.
During the co-creation event in London, Iain McKinnon, Head of Inclusive Design and Co-founder of the Global Disability Innovation (GDI) Hub, described how millions of people remain in need of better quality assistive devices and that people in low-income countries were at a particular disadvantage. “There is no reason that this should be the case, every individual should have the assistive devices required to meet their needs,” he said. “The challenge is doing that in a way that is appropriate, affordable, and accessible. That’s what this program is all about.”
“By having a competition-based process where you filter out a lot of applications to get the best quality ones you can, you can put them in a very intensive period with a lot of support to get them to a stage where they can deliver. It can seem like quite a harsh filtration process, but that’s the only way you can do it to get the best ideas and the best chance of success. The exciting thing about the Enable Makeathon is the encouragement of grassroots innovation and getting many more people to realise their ideas can make a difference.”
