Resilient Makers Stories: Lemuel Clark “Archie” Velasco

How do we cultivate a resilient and responsive distributed design community?

From August 23rd to October 17th Fab Lab Barcelona is hosting a weekly online chat series, where guests share their personal experiences of responding to moments of crisis. The aim is to collaboratively work on a shared vision, align values, and develop best practices.

On August 30th we welcome our second guest Lemuel Clark “Archie” Velasco. From 2015 to 2022 he managed the first open makerspace innovation center in Southern Philippines, FAB LAB Mindanao, a collaborative project of the Philippine Department of Trade and Industry, the Department of Science and Technology, the U.S. Department of State through the GIST Program. He founded FAB LABs Philippines along with 23 FAB LABs as the Philippine FAB LAB Network and he has built various FAB LABs in the Philippines. Since 2019 he has been implementing the Makers without Borders Webinar Program with the U.S. Embassy in the Philippines and since 2020 the Makerspace Management Academy with USAID STRIDE. He is currently an associate professor of information systems from the Department of Information Technology in the Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology.

The Resilient Makers Stories will be facilitated by Jean Luc Pierite, as part of the MDEF Residency Program. They are part of the European project Reservist that aims to establish a network of ‘reservist cells’, resilient networks that can be activated within 48hrs to switch to manufacturing medical products and services that are spiking in demand. Reservist has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 101016041.