 This is the way to do it. This is the way to do it. This is the way to do it. Come to Youth in Action, where youth are taking leadership by storm. Martin Oloh, a young CEO and founder of Fab Lab Winnum, has more. Martin, Kido Goto, what do you like doing outside of work? Thank you. I really like watching birds and of course nature work. Birds are interesting creatures to watch. The way they play, the way they sing. So I have a question. How do you watch birds? Do you lay on the ground or just stand and wait to see them? At times you can lay on the ground. At times you just get a good seat somewhere and you know just sitting with your back or resting on a tree and watching the birds play. It's interesting. I hear that is a way of meditating. Is it that for you? Yeah, it is because it takes away your mind of a lot of things and now you move to the nature. Wow. So let's get back to it. What is the story behind the creation of Fab Lab Winnum? Probably I'll start with introducing myself once again. My name is Martin Oloh as you had correctly said. I'm the founder and CEO of Fab Lab Winnum and I'm also one of the founders of the Association of Countrywide Innovation hubs. So previously I was a treasurer right now. I am the Secretary of Membership and Legal Affairs. So this is an association which brings together all hubs in Kenya, especially those in the grassroot. And when you say hubs, in my mind I'm like hubs and tech, they go line in line. Could you clarify that? Yes, you're right. Hubs are spaces where young people gather to tinker and learn entrepreneurship skills and work on their startups. So in most cases a lot of startups which turn out to be big businesses outside there are from hubs. Hubs also have also helped in bridging, actually offering some trainings. A lot of young people. Let me give you an example of IT. You get an IT student from a university. After finishing they get out, they realize that they only had a very little training, especially practical. Now when they are in hub they get exposed because they also take advantage of the experience in the hub. You will get different people, they'll teach you different tricks around them and so that really builds a lot of people in that space. So what prompted the creation of Fabla Buinam as the CEO and founder? Fabla Buinam is one of the biggest dreams I had but it came also as a surprise to me because throughout my life I had gone through different life challenges and different jobs. From high school I started doing some businesses for milk vending and then I tried to create a small cyber cave and later on I teamed up with another lady who was a US Peace Corps volunteer to create an agenda violence recovery center which actually we are trying to partner with Nairobi Women's Hospital that is way back and then later on I went to work with Cambridge CDC as a data officer. So during that time I was able to get exposed to computer lots. I started researching about Fablabs because I was already volunteering in another organization as a board member so I had learned about Fablabs there so I researched more and then asked if I could go to learn about it. So I was offered a scholarship for Fabacademy training and I went to be based in Nairobi because when you're doing Fabacademy training you must be based in an existing hub so there's one called Gearbox in Nairobi so I was based there for seven months and did my training. So you mentioned earlier somewhere about creating a safe house for GBV victims. Yes, yes. How did that go? Okay, we created a generally general violence recovery center in collaboration with Saddam Community Hospital so we were based in Saddam Community Hospital and we were handling a lot of GBV cases but by the time we were doing it it still had a lot of hurdles ranging from the legal team like the police officers, the children's sector among others but what I can say is that a lot of domestic violence cases especially women and men I can say 90 percent of women or men who reported their cases they ended up uniting because they went through the process and they were able to learn where they had issues and then they reconciled and there are cases which went through the legal process to the courts. The defilement and rape cases a lot of them went through the courts but unfortunately most of them were being dropped off because you reach a point and then relatives team up together and you know they even help in destruction of evidences and all that so by the end of the day you feel like you are in full serenity. But I hope you will get back on that horse. Yes Fabla Buinam what kinds of activities do you do at Fabla? So Fabla Buinam basically is an innovation maker space and like the other hubs which majorly focusing on software development and entrepreneurship Fabla is focusing on hardware where people make actual things. So it's an innovation maker space and it's also from the name Fabla it's a fabrication laboratory it's a laboratory where people are able to come and test their ideas and bring them to reality using what we call digital fabrication tools. So the digital fabrication tools are these machines which you can use you do your designing in a computer and then using them you can cut you can mold you can you know they they do different functions. So some of those machines include laser cutter vinyl cutter 3d printers actually right now 3d printer is one of the one of the technologies which are being appreciated and some some in medical field it has been used even to to build some of the spare parts of medical equipment it is even used to make some of the parts especially doctors who who are even teaching they use it for example I remember was it in Kenyatta Hospital where somebody's jaw was broken and the 3d printing was used to print as a copy of a jaw which could help in shape the jaw which had broken. So you deal mainly with innovation is this a field that you studied for? No and yes actually my background was in social work and for the longest time I have been operating as a social worker but I during my work I was feeling like I was not giving so much in social work I was giving more of hope but people wanted more and so in the event that they want more I started thinking of how best can we do that and that is how now after learning through the Fab Academy learning the digital fabrication skills now I created a space where we can now teach people to make things and and and and produce them so that is why I'm saying yes and no so the yes part is where I learned through the Fab Academy training it's a seven-month intensive training it's more of a full engineering course squeezed into in seven months yeah and in FabLab the way you help people learn how to skillfully innovate things what activities do you help do that? Yes um yeah okay we we have two different ways we have the programs that we run and we have other activities so to start with the programs we run we have a program called Fab Kids this one is a program focusing on children teaching hands-on skills to children at the earliest age and this has always been appreciated by other people telling us that this is the real CBC because we actually expose children to do things one of the things which I always believe is that the fact that today parents are are buying toys to the children they think they're making work easier to the children but what they don't know is that they are taking away the power from the child to become creative to become a problem solver to become a thinker because when a child is struggling to make their own things they learn along the way I always give example of a child making a football using the the dual ass and and and the rope he's already learning material science he's learning that probably the material I used the other day did not work well and now let me try this so majorly in in Fab Kids we are trying to teach children with fun where they are just working on building their own toys but then the questions they ask and some of the things we teach them by the end of the day they shall have realized that they've learned so much without necessarily knowing that it is class time to learn so that is one we have another one called she builds she builds a program which is bringing more women into hardware tech because today in many occasions you get women in in even engineering they you will mostly find them in the software part of engineering probably doing marketing for for a company or something but we want a situation where women come back and do the actual work in african setup women were the people who are doing the actual work if you look at the weaving you look at the pottery women were able to do that and again one of our interest in women is that women knows how to transfer knowledge when a woman is doing something most likely children will be around her and children will pick on what she's doing but when a man is working in most cases they don't want children around so that is our program for she builds and in she builds we whenever we are selecting we make sure that we have seven at least 75 percent of women and around 25 percent of men this one is purposely to help pull the women into that space because women tend to share away from the hardware space then we have another program called Joakali plus Joakali plus is focusing on helping the Joakali artisans to improve on their their products today a lot of us only buy products from Joakali because it is cheap you know we want a situation where Joakali products our products local products can compete in the market with other products and somebody goes to choose it because I love this one because of ABC you know because it is very cheap so one of the reasons we learned is that there is insufficient scale in the in the field and then there's also lack of proper machinery that is why you see a lot of products from China are excelling because China is heavily invested in in proper machinery and that is where our precision machines like CNC router laser cutter vinyl are coming in handy yes and the field you're in yes it's more of mentorship and coaching yes do you engage in that exclusively yes um of course mentorship and coaching is one of the area that we have to do because you have to do handholding um innovation is is not a walk in the path actually many times you hear adults or older people telling young people that you know go out there start business but do they do those business it's not a field and it's not it's not a walk in the park so in in innovation and especially now when you come to hardware innovation you have to think you have to do a lot of mistakes and by that it consumes time it consumes money and it consumes materials so in coaching you actually increases chances of you increases chances of someone to produce something very fast and what skill does one require to join such an industry like fabla buna um okay there are skills and there is passion and actually the first thing I look at is passion because you might get today our our our our universities are graduating a lot of people but are they getting into the spaces to do things no they have their skill but they are not moving there so it needs passion and then skills um because our work is more in computer so you might have background in computer or you might not you might have background probably in mechanical engineering or not you might have your background in various areas because also when we talk about innovation at times people who are skilled are only implementing the minds of the other people but the people according to me a lot of innovators probably might not even have the right skill like you today you might be working with your cameras and everything and when you are working with them you have a problem which disturbs you when you are working and you might be thinking of how can I solve this in your mind you might be having an idea how how best you want it to work then you come to our space and express to us that you know I have this problem and I'm thinking that if you can build for me something which look like this and this then it can work before you know it after in starting us and we work on it and and then you tell us change this to this change this to this you are already an innovator because you have built something which is which is which has been a problem for all the media guys in this space and now you've come with a solution probably you are you are not even having any simple skill in 3d printing or card designing yeah speaking of change the tech space keeps evolving and the innovation space as well so how do you keep up with the updates in our space you keep on researching you keep your networks is your network we belong to a lot of networks and in these spaces people keep on learning we have a lot of webinars I can tell you that we belong to various associations both globally and locally and these spaces and then internet is also one of the greatest resource that every every one innovation space must use right now we have a lot of people who have learned and they are earning huge money is just through youtube learning through youtube so we keep on learning every day speaking of those spaces where can one find these spaces because yes to koapa we are trying to research we are trying to understand things but there's a lot of information out there how do I select that this is what exactly I mean yes there are a lot of a lot of resource resources places one of them is internet as I have mentioned in internet you can get so much and then also through networks for example in our space where we have different people working on different things you might come there with your idea that you want to work on something and then you get someone else who is giving you free consultants because you're like oh this one you're working on I I saw someone who was working or I previously work on something like this so this is how it's done so by the end of the day you will be able to gather a lot of knowledge and again there are several trainings that we do those are some of the areas that where you will be able to get ideas and improve on your scale and what are your major wins as an organization ah one of the biggest wins we had was when corona happened I can confident confidently say that we were the first people to come up with some solution towards challenges which came with corona and this was was called M Safari contact contact tracing mobile application actually we were reacting to Professor Nyong'o had just made a statement saying that the matter to operators should maintain manifest and we came up with a solution which again we also included the the cashless payment in it so it was able to help that apart from that in our kids program we've been able to see that there are a number of kids who are now willing to be part of the program and they are improving in their classwork in various places where they are because of the hands-on skills because our interest is if children can learn so much skill and they can be able to to be as practical as possible then by the end of the day we will not be able to have graduates who are reaching up the ladder they have their first class honours but then they are crying that we don't have jobs they should be able to have a lot of alternatives in their lives in she builds we are already seeing more women showing interest right now we are doing our second cohort and our first cohort had a lot of difficulties this second cohort we received over 200 applicants even though we were only taking 20 and we are seeing a lot of dedication in the field because women want to be empowered trust me women are the breadwinners in every home whether the man is earning a million shillings it is the woman who plans how the money packs there and the kids how do you encourage a kid to spend some time innovating something and honestly the concentration span of a kid is very minimal so how do you encourage them to do it we actually don't encourage them we only let them to play play in a guided direction and as they play they are working on their their their innovations actually the freedom that we give to the children to work even though guided that gives them even become more creative recently we are actually doing a program called mtaka fab kids and we were in one of the schools and kids surprised me how they came up with waste being and a dustpan creatively and they were even telling me that can we also include some electronics in it and all that and with that if it is improved a little bit then boom you have a serious innovation so our our our trick is allowing kids to learn by just doing things in fun so to them they're just making things for fun but to us they are learning wow and in the current Kenya that we are in there's a huge problem of unemployment how does fab lab help and get that one of the ways is ensuring that we give practical skills because when you have hands on practical skills then you are at advantage position of trying to do various things and that also increases your employability because if you have the right skill the the employers will need you either in short term or full time again we have networks and using these networks we are able to expose some of the people within our space to the to different industry players um and and also we just encourage young people also to take up volunteer work during volunteer work or or internship program you are able to grasp a lot of skills which otherwise you would have paid money for so these are some of the ways and also back to online there are a lot of people meaning millions in online jobs so you can learn a skill there and be consistent and have your living there and you're living there so what is your call to a young person out there who has a dream like you did have but has no plan on how to execute it my call is that wake up and do something I know everyone might be thinking of government this government that but team up with others look at these spaces we have a lot of innovation spaces walk into these spaces if you get a place where you can learn a skill or two gather that skill you don't know where it's going to help you if you are able to access internet use it constructively just put something you can as well have a friend who is even selling shoes take photos put it on your social media tell them the price before you know it you are making money in fablab we have shared tools we have shared space so come there and many other innovation spaces they have shared spaces so come there find out how can you start doing something find other people who are also having similar ideas team up together start working on something it is possible so what are platform social media platforms can you give for our viewer to find you okay we are on all social media platforms so our our website first is www.fablabwinam.org we have another one for she builds which is www.shebuilds.co.ka we have all our our social media platforms linkedin facebook name them all of them are called fablab winam yeah instagram everything yes thank you so much mati you're running a beta by speech and also by doing thank you so much for coming i'm sure my viewer umeski akitu and wake up and do something don't just have a dream and let it die wake up do something have the networks because through your networks is how you will get your network this has been new thin action see you next time this is the way to do it