Free 3D-printing classes for low-income youngsters to dissuade them from criminality

Executive Sumary
•    We’re based in Michoacán, a region in México that has long been suffering from extreme violence.
•    We believe the root causes have been the lack of proper education & motivation to pursue higher aims, resulting in youngsters pursuing to be youtubers, influencers, tiktokers or worst, joining drug cartels.
•    We aim to provide free 3D-printing courses for low-income children to integrate them into a circular economy by recycling plastic bottles to make printing filament & incentivate their curiosity.

Detail
Youth lack successful role models to serve as a reference. The songs of local artists praise the life of luxury and wealth of criminals. This generates widespread social apathy that results in the pursuit of mediocre or even criminal life goals. Hard work, education, and aspiration for higher moral values have been lost. Young people need to recover those successful role models that make them believe that it is possible to achieve a better and more dignified future through honest work. The way to achieve it is education and our strategy is to show how the studying friendly side leads to professional development. Through the implementation of the STEM education model as 3D printing classes. Inadvertently, youngsters will develop a taste for studying in areas of artistic or engineering design, manufacturing, and product design. These skills will open opportunities for both study and entrepreneurship within a circular economy .

A circular economy based on waste reduction through plastic bottles recycling will open an opportunity for low-income families to generate an income.  Through the promotion of free 3D-printing classes, we will recycle plastic bottles to produce 3D-printing filament and we will motivate, inspire and engage low-income youngsters to become optimistic regarding their future, and to pursue a professional/technical career development path while dissuading from joining drug cartels.

Society’s unity and motivation will pave the way to change.

Through the implementation of the STEM education model as 3D printing workshops we invite youngsters to bring plastic bottles to learn how to recycle them and produce filament.

This filament is used in the free 3D printing workshops to produce small pieces while we teach them how to use modeling software. 

At the same time, youngsters learn the basics about how to manipulate the printers to produce any kind of products, arts, etc.

Finally, we encourage them to pursue one of two paths: A) pursue entrepreneurship through the design of 3d printed pieces for events such as weddings or B) pursue a career development path in one of the universities that support us.

To keep model sustainability, we sell 3D printed pieces and give more advanced courses with a cost.

*3D-printing pilot classes

We’ve implemented the first 3D-printing pilot classes among low-income students based on STEM education model. More at https://www.proyeccion22.org/gallery-1.html

*Motivational e inspirational social media pilot campaigns implementation

With a focus on gender equality we have implemented a motivational and inspirational social media pilot campaigns  with a special focus on women for gender equality. More at:

https://www.proyeccion22.org/gallery-3.html & www.instagram.com/personasque_inspiran/ & https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNfgvc1dWxw

*Students involved/ Lives improved

For the past years, we’ve involved around 35 students and 16 youngsters to pursue a career development path through STEM-based projects More at https://www.proyeccion22.org/gallery-1.html

*Violence impact

Our theory of change aims to improve social well-being by motivating youngsters to pursue their integration into the circular-economy by entrepreneur. 3D-printing classes will serve as a hub of new and innovative ideas that will help to reach an income. With a feasible source of income and the proper motivation youngsters may more easily decide to avoid the current drugs-path by recycling plastic bottles.

*Universities involvement

We have signed collaboration agreements with more than 20 universities nation wide for collaboration and sharing technical expertise. Som of them are:

Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey Campus Morelia, Instituto Tecnológico de México Campus Morelia, Universidad Autónoma de Aguascalientes, Universidad Politécnica de Aguascalientes, Instituto Tecnológico de Querétaro, Instituto Tecnológico de Colima, Instituto Tecnológico de San Luis Potosí, Instituto Tecnológico de Celaya, Instituto Tecnológico de Tijuana, Instituto Tecnológico de Toluca, Instituto Tecnológico de Guanajuato, Instituto Tecnológico de Aguascalientes, Instituto Tecnológico de Mazatlán, Instituto Tecnológico de Uruapan, Universidad Contemporánea de las Américas, Universidad Interamericana para el Desarrollo, Universidad Vizcaya, among others.

Nominations and support

We have been nominated for the Earthshot Prize by the McGill  University and the Cool Earth Organization and we have received support from the King Boudouin Foundation. https://kbs-frb.be/en/encourag...

We have launched the solution in the city of Uruapan with great acceptance from the local community.

The direct beneficiaries of the solution vary according to the marketing effort of the workshops, the engagement from youngsters at the workshop and the level of benefits awareness we achieve among the community.

We have 3 small 3D printers and six laptops to accommodate a total of twelve youngsters per one-hour workshop, 5 workshops per day, totaling 60 direct beneficiaries per day.

There are indirect beneficiaries which are a lotof youngsters that attend the workshop but have not access to a computer. We estimate around near 200 youngsters.

There are many limitations due the tremendous social insecurity and it is hard to hire instructors because most of the graduated engineers tend to migrate abroad.

To solve this, we have signed collaboration agreements with major Universities in the region to source the instructors which strength our position in the location and initiates our stage of growth.

The situation is exceptionally dire in México.

A financial barrier. Federal Government financial support for any university, sports, arts organizations and NGOs was halted. Researchers, athletes, artists, and social communities have to find new ways to self-fund their activities.

A social crisis barrier.  Violence is at levels never heard before.

We recomend discretion about shared links due extreme violence protrait (gunshots and kidnaping) at the region.

We do not aim to directly fight against cartels insecurity but to set the foundations of what in a future will be a better society. We believe such cornerstones are education, unity and hope as hope for a better future must remain to lead society towards unity and collaboration.

We expect to bring unity from several civil society sectors & organizations & group them arround educational projects to build a profesional development path for the youth.

We´ll achieve so by promoting free 3D-printing courses for low-income youngsters to link them to educational opportunities on local universities and promoting circurlar economy entrepreneurship by recycling plastic bottles.

Gunshots

https://twitter.com/michangoonga/status/1695497834936549882?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet

Kidnaping

https://twitter.com/Quadratin_/status/1695277083029615005

We must raise awareness.

A cultural barrier. It has become a challenge to attract, retain and engage instructors. The millennial generation expects enourmous salaries with little accountabilitya and performing few activities. We have found that to attract the best talent we must make a extraordinary financial effort and strength of selection criteria. We need to improve our magnagerial skills with focus on human resources and team leadership.

We see beyond innovation.

More than innovative it is necessary to bring a glimpse of how to counter the narco culture.

We believe the root causes of the extreme violence, the tremendous migration and the lack of opportunities have been the lack of proper education & motivation to pursue higher aims, resulting in youngsters pursuing to be youtubers, influencers, tiktokers or worst, joining drug cartels.

We aim to provide free 3D-printing courses for low-income children to integrate them into a circular economy by recycling plastic bottles to make printing filament & incentivate their curiosity.

By showing them the path for entrepreneurship or professional development we believe we can make an impact in the long term.

Theory of change

*Acquiring sufficient printers to deliver free workshops

3D-printers represent a bottle neck to allow youngsters to learn.  By distributing 3 students per printer we expect to maximize use and impact.

We plan to pre-print keychains to give away to gain attention, promote motivation, engagement and curiosity on 3D design, recycling for circular economy and entrepreneurship.

*Involve local universities

At age of 12 to 18 youngsters use to choose their career path, a decision which is based upon the opportunities available or just those that they are aware of. By involving universities, youngsters may link their aspirations with current schools curricula.

Furthermore, we plan to involve advanced students from universities to form instructors teams that will carry on with the courses, expanding the interaction from youngsters with future graduates.

We believe universities will be the pivot on which we may procure society’s unity.

 Securing areas for easy access, maintenance, reparation

Public libraries are willing to participate in the project by sharing their spaces to bring back people.

We must advance the previous developed workshop to enable the reparation and maintenance of broken 3D-printers, preparation of didactic material and circular economy recycling.

In our zone a manufacturing/recycling hub is growing up, energy consumption is one of the major costs drivers. By implementing currently purchased solar panels we will be able to  strengh sustainability.

Follow Luis Pasteur vision

Envision a future where every workshop becomes a space of learning.

If we produce successful workshops, we could replicate them in the resto of Mexico, accelerating the path for social fabric reconstruction.

4. Quality Education

We aim to bring high quality technical education for youngsters that have no access to it, so they can pursue entreprenurship or a carrer to improve its own well-being so they are discouraged of joining drug cartels.

We measure it by the number of students registered to the workshop and how many workshops do they attend.

5. Gender Equality

Through motivational campaign we exalt moral virtudes among community to involve and engage youngster with a focus on women with the aim to keep our gender equality policy.

We measure it by the number of men and women involved in the project.

8. Decent Work and Economic Growth

3D printing classes are aimed to show a path to commercialize the produced figures. It will be attractive for youngsters in terms of startup their own 3D printing company so they can a financial incentive to focus on and improve it own social well-being.

We measure it by the list of attendance. We found that the youngsters most likely to succed are those with the will to learn and the need to help their families.

10. Reduced Inequalities

People that has the resources to study abroad or migrate already fled. Those who stayed are the ones that lack of resources to study or the avoid criminality. This make them the most vulnerable part of the society. This sector desesperately needs a life line to change their situation.

We measure it with the attendance list.

16. Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions

We expect to have an impact in the long term. So far we have no data about the impact on social fabric reconstruction. We expect to measure it with the number of successful stories about youngsters self improvement and startups created.

Most recent violence disturbs in Michoacan are about the burning of local businesses and stores as shown in this national newspaper: https://www.excelsior.com.mx/n...

These acts are being conducted “by minors”, children that have had poor guidance.  They are not terrorists, but they have wrongfully been influenced by poor values.

Can we change their expectations for becoming people of good? The situation on the near future looks dark, but we must try to do something to change the status quo.

By ourselves, we can achieve little, but if we manage to engage society and to bring unity, maybe we could accelerate the change for a better society and make these children opt for better well-being activities.

3D-printing is the implementation of Computer Numeric Control technology.

Through the generation of gcode, a previously generated figure can be translated into a computer language that controls a set of stepper motors which will guide and extruder in the position where material can be deposed for the physical recreation of the 3D figure.

Its novelty has recently gained momentum due to the increase on affordability of the hardware and software, still, it is cost-prohibitive for low-income youngsters.

By offering free access to it and asking them to bring their own plastic bottles, we aim to incert them into the circular economy of recycling to make their own filament the reduce the production cost of parts. Then the produced parts are presented to the students as a possibility to generate their own income.

4 Fulltime staff

4 Partime staff

2 Universities

3 Libraries/Coordinators.

3 years

With a focus on gender equality we implement a motivational campaign to engage communities arround the search of inspirational people and the pursue of higher moral values to reconstruct the social fabric.

www.instagram.com/personasque_inspiran/

A percentage of the workshop seats must remain free to achieve our social impact goals.

These youngsters are selected by a social public agency.

To maintain sustainability we charge a minimal cost for workshop seats to those interested youngsters willing to learn. Also while the printers are not being used in the workshops we print small figures which we put on sale during the workshops. This allows us to offset a percentage of the costs.

We reduce collaboration costs by signing collaboration agreements with engaged universities and libraries to offset the cost of renting spaces of free public access.

We are strengthening our inhouse 3D printing capabilities to offer 3D-printing services for the manufacturing of wedding gifts, special designs, and 3D renderization for architects.

We address this question by identifying the major costs and the major sources of revenue and how do we plan to manage them.

COSTS

Among the major costs, there is energy consumption and the cost of labor from instructors.

To eliminate the energy cost we have successfully sourced solar panels that will allow us to operate our revenue streams at a very competitive cost.

The major costs of labor come from the instructors as their knowledge is more sophisticated and expensive.  We are tackling this cost by signing collaboration agreements with regional universities so instructors perform their social service internships delivering classes for low-income youngsters. For these instructors, we set a financial incentive once they finish their internship so they can be paid and their experience is not lost and transmitted to new instructors.

REVENUE STREAMS

3D printing allows us to produce small figures that are fashionable and attractive for youngsters, these are promoted during the workshop and allow us to offset workshop costs.

3D printer gifts for weddings are another source of income on which small 3D printed pieces are designed for the occasion.

Another revenue stream we are testing is delivering specialized 3D modeling for architects of professionals in other areas such as artists, collectors, etc.