![Makers Making Change Project Manager Zee Kesler in a park setting with gold-leafed trees in the background](http://twomaverix.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Zee-e1553980648871.jpg)
(Photograph courtesy of The Neil Squire Society, and used with permission.)
For Makers Making Change Project Manager Zee Kesler, making and empowerment just naturally go together.
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Zee’s work with the maker community includes spearheading Vancouver’s Maker Education Initiative. She is also the co-founder of “Curiosity in the Classroom”, a maker club for sixth-graders. And she’s been the lead on numerous mobile maker workshop projects–including the 2012 “Maker Mobile Workshops on Wheels”.
And now, she’d like to empower you–to get involved in making a difference.
Makers Making Change, an initiative of nonprofit Neil Squire Society, recruits maker volunteers. The goal: to create low-cost assistive technology for people with disabilities.
in the Makers Making Change archive are more than fifty open-source projects. These include a wheelchair-mounted dog treat dispenser; a Braille keyboard overlay; and an adaptive bottle opener, for people with arthritis.
There’s also the LipSync, Makers Making Change’s flagship creation, which is a mouth-controlled device to operate a touchscreen!
So, what do they need? As far as maker volunteers go, they welcome anyone who has the time to help. Projects can be as simple as 3D printing out a device–or as involved as building a LipSync.
And they invite anyone with a disability to reach out and request a maker’s help, to create an assistive device.
Makers Making Change has done a number of events in Canada and the U.S. They’ll host a “buildathon” in San Francisco this Sunday, March 31, according to their website. And they’re headed to Toronto, for the Abilities Expo, happening April 5-7!
On this edition of Over Coffee®, you will hear:
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How the maker community first captured Zee’s imagination;
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How she first became involved with the Neil Squire Society;
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A description of Makers Making Change (in case you missed our 2017 interview with Neil Squire Society Director of Development Chad Leaman:
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What are some of the top devices people request to have created by makers;
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Several ways anyone interested can get involved and help;
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A number of upcoming events;
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How to get a presentation in your community!
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Methods of “hacking” toys, to adapt them for children with disabilities;
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A suggestion for makers who are into creating with textiles;
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An exciting upcoming maker-education project on which Makers Making Change is working!
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What Makers Making Change will need, in the area of help on theirnew project;
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What Zee learned about the maker community, during her work with Makers Making Change.