FabAcademy Student
I am the fabmanager of la Kazlab, the fablab of Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni in French Guyana.
I have a master degree in mechanical engineering and I worked 3 years as a consultant in a design office conducting fluid dynamics simulations (CFD) mainly in the field of aeronautical engines.
I came to French Guyana 1 year and a half ago to become a teacher. I started to use “la Kazlab” as a tool for my teaching. Rapidly, I saw the fablab as an opportunity to be a teacher and a student the same time. So, in June 2018, I applied as a fabmanager.
I have been told that our FabAcademy is the first multi-nodes FabAcademy. This means that I have to cross a border every two weeks to go the IoT lab in Paramaribo which is around a 3 hours trip.
On the other side the seven students and our instructor have to do the trip to "la kazlab" at the same rythm. IoT lab is more focused on electronics and the kazlab is more focused on machining.
I love the kazlab because it is located into an old prison where many NGO are now installed making the place having a second life. We are a very accessible fablab where people only have to pay 30€ a year to use our machines with no limit.
This fabacademy has been made possible thanks to my director Rudi Floquet, Theo Boomsma IoTlab director and the Ministry of trade and industry of Suriname who managed to get funding from the Inter-American Development Bank. I thanks them for this incredible experience.
The first few days, I realized that I missed many skills in Digital Fabrication. My director talk to me about the FabAcademy. In collaboration with the Suriname, neighboring country, we managed to organize the first multi-nodes FabAcademy.
My second motivation is to be a trainer next year. One of the main setback to take the training this year was to find a trainer. We finally found Juan Carlos Miranda, from Costa Rica, who did the FabAcademy in 2017. I thank him to do the trip for us.
Finally, we have many projects in Saint-Laurent. One of them is to create a training for people who have dropped out school. I hope that FabAcademy will help me to build and manage this project.