[sudoroom] help Bilal build hackerspaces in Iraq, 2 days left

[Rachel McConnell]

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bilal/baghdad-community-hackerspace-workshops

I have this friend, Bilal Ghalib, whom you may have heard of in various 
contexts.  He's a super sweet guy, a maker of things, a lover of people, 
a builder of community.  What he is doing with his life is encouraging 
the growth of Maker Culture worldwide, and particularly in the Middle 
East.  He explains it much better than I can in this article[0].

Last year he and Mitch Altman went to Cairo to help run a temporary, 
3-day hackerspace there.  Three days.  At that time, there was one 
hackerspace, just starting up, in Egypt.  As I write this, less than a 
year later, there are FIVE hacker and maker spaces in Egypt.  They have 
Facebook pages, check them out[1]!

He is currently about to travel to Iraq and do this again[2].  And he 
needs money, for travel, for soldering irons and fabric and 3D printing 
supplies and lasers and other tools and materials, for shipping donated 
computers, for bandwidth and hosting and publishing and printing.  As 
you can imagine, there is not much income to be had in this work, so he 
is funded almost 100% through donations.  He's halfway to his goal for 
this trip, but there are only two days left in the kickstarter.

I am personally convinced that if we had 100 Bilals out there, teaching 
and encouraging and connecting, there'd be a solid peace in the region 
within five years.  Can you pitch in a few bucks to support making, 
hacking, art, and creativity in the Middle East?

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bilal/baghdad-community-hackerspace-workshops

Forward widely!

Rachel McConnell

[0]
http://www.instructables.com/community/The-Middle-East-and-the-Global-Hackerspace-Movemen/

[1]
Cairo Hackerspace: http://www.facebook.com/CairoHackerSpace
El Minya Hackerspace: 
http://www.facebook.com/pages/El-Minya-Hacker-Space/110235235753993
Alexandria Hackerspace: http://www.facebook.com/groups/348988958470932
Mansoura Hackerspace: http://www.facebook.com/groups/213558152073212
Egypt Fablab: http://www.facebook.com/fablab.egypt

[2]
Here's what Boingboing says about this project:

http://boingboing.net/2012/09/07/kickstarting-a-hackerspace-in.html