February 18, 2021 was a day full of adrenaline and excitement as we celebrated the official launch of the Fab Lab Nepal amidst a small group of twenty attendees including potential stakeholders, partners and users. Nepal Communitere together with Field Ready Nepal and remote donor partners from USA, MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms and Dassault/Solidworks Foundation awaited for the complete set up and launch of this FAB journey in Nepal.
Fab Lab Nepal is the culmination of two years of hard work, toil and tears and we couldn’t wait to launch Fab Lab Nepal in our vibrant hub on an auspicious Thursday afternoon! Ever since our inception, we aimed to establish a valuable resource center that’s accessible to diverse communities who can foster and be part of the innovation, makership and entrepreneurship themselves. Launching the lab and presenting this to our stakeholders who need this, was a dream come true for us as a community-based innovation hub.
We kicked off the event with a small puja celebration in the central Lab led by our team! Our aim is to make this laboratory as accessible and open as possible to women, marginalized and differently abled communities. To make our space more accessible, we have designed the space in such a way that it’s also friendly for wheelchair users and the visually impaired through the lift that takes you to the electronics and 3D printing room with one push of a button.
We dedicated a valuable portion of the event time to celebrate the hard work and dedication of the team who made it possible to what we have achieved today. We took the chance to give recognition to our team who worked day and night for bringing this massive and first ever Fab Lab to Nepal.
We wanted to invite and bring together loads more stakeholders and innovation champions throughout Nepal whom we have been working with but due to the Covid risks, we had to host this as a small private launch event with limited participants from our like minded partners nearby: Kathmandu University’s Design School, National Innovation Center, Karkhana, MakerValley, De’Sign & Print, CNC Craft, ZenerTech, and more.
We had three amazing guest speakers coming in from Nepal’s government, education and private sector who shared their own pain points they faced in their journey due to lack of a digital laboratory and quality equipment housed under one roof in the country. We felt pumped up hearing them share their hopes and expectations towards the lab and what more of an impact we had! We had Dr. Sunil Babu Shrestha, Vice chancellor of Nepal Academy of Science and Technology (NAST), Dr. Dambar Bahadur Nepali, Dean of School of Engineering, Kathmandu University and Ms. Kreeti Shakya, Founder of Kazi Studios as our chief guest speakers to inaugurate the lab.
“It was my great pleasure to participate in the inauguration program of Fab Lab Nepal. Highly impressed with the wonderful initiation the Nepal Communitere team has made. I wish for its success!”
Dr. Sunil Babu Shrestha, Vice chancellor Nepal Academy of Science and Technology (NAST)
Dr. Sunil Babu Shrestha, Vice chancellor of Nepal Academy of Science and Technology (NAST) expressed his vision of probable collaboration of Fab Lab Nepal with NAST to foster many more innovations in Nepal and contribute in bringing Nepal ahead in terms of its global innovation ranking.
Education sector pioneer, Dr. Dambar Bahadur Nepali, Dean of School of Engineering, Kathmandu University shared many more ways to strengthen the Tech & Education sector of Nepal through Fab Lab as universities, tech enthusiasts and students can access advanced technological equipment in Fab Lab itself to get hands-on knowledge of machines rather than having to go to foreign universities for practice.
Ms. Kreeti Shakya, an innovation and design enthusiast, shared how the challenging process during the product designing and testing phase is finally now super easy, cost effective and time-saving with the Fabrication laboratory in Nepal. We also did some live demonstrations of the Fab Lab equipment for our curious audience where they had the opportunity to observe the 3D-printing, digital embroidery processes where we created personalized masks for all our attendees. Shanti didi, created her own digital embroidery design in a mask and handkerchief!
With the Fab Lab as a big addition to this resource center and our country, we are looking for more partners and stakeholders to join our hands to accelerate innovation, problem-solving and entrepreneurship in Nepal. If you want to know more about Fab Lab and are interested in using the space check out our Fab Lab Nepal FAQS and contact bahar@communitere.org. for partnerships and institutional memberships.
Want to Schedule Time to Use the Fab Lab Nepal?
Email Bipin Sharma today at bipin@communitere.org to check out our cool equipment.
