[hackerspaces] Refugee Memberships...

[Bue Thastum]

I’ve often been thinking that a cool way someone could help refugees in a particular city or area was to try and make some sort of guide for open, low or no cost, community spaces and gatherings that actively works on making it easy for newcomers to participate. Hacker- and makerspaces would be an obvious thing to figure in that, alongsides stuff like people’s kitchens, volunteer-run urban gardens, various sports groups etc. The guide could also detail, for example, whether and to what extend prior knowledge and skills were needed in order to be able to participate.    

- Bue


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Bue Thastum
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http://buethastum.dk
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On 01 Dec 2015, at 18:32, sheila miguez <shekay at pobox.com> wrote:

> Doing outreach to inform people that hackerspaces are a thing so that they know they have an option to use them is a good idea.
> 
> Working with a local agency who is hooked in sounds like a good idea to get the information out there since it's not likely that recent refugees will hear about you via word of mouth. Free classes (in addition to grants) sounds like a good idea too.
> 
> A long time ago I volunteered to help tutor refugee kids and also tried assisting with a class on computers. It was very different than what I expected and what I knew to teach wasn't what they needed at that point.
> 
> Talking to the case workers before progressing too far with plans might be a good idea, and perhaps you all have done this?
> 
> 
> On Tue, Dec 1, 2015 at 11:18 AM, matt <matt at nycresistor.com> wrote:
> Does making membership available to them make sense in that scenario?  these are folks who have no sought you out.  You have sought them out.  Maybe you should simply run it as free classes.
> 
> On Tue, Dec 1, 2015 at 9:11 AM, Simon Clark <simon at zebraspot.com> wrote:
> Hah, no, good point.  
> 
> Our assumption is that we will work with the local agency that is resettling refuges. We would give them a list of some basic requirements (basic interest, some history of working with tools, basic english, etc), and let them decide who the initial recipients are. 
> 
> On Dec 1, 2015, at 8:55 AM, matt <matt at nycresistor.com> wrote:
> 
>> If any refuges have shown up to one of our open events they have not identified themselves as refuges.
>> 
>> On Tue, Dec 1, 2015 at 8:41 AM, Simon Clark <simon at zebraspot.com> wrote:
>> At our meeting last night, we voted to make 3 memberships available to incoming refugees.  We’re just starting to discuss how the recipients will be chosen, and what the prerequisites are, but I was wondering if any other spaces had done something like this, and learned any lessons from it.
>> 
>> Simon Clark
>> Diyode Community Workshop
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> -- 
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