usanii lab
from their about page:
USANII LAB is a collective of young creatives from the eastlands of Nairobi. It was started in January 2013 as a communication design course. Within different workshops we gain design skills and practise graphic design computer programs. It‘s all about experimenting with different fields of arts and design and having fun to design our environment.
_______
intro’d to Viola Kup, founder, and usanii lab while reading digitally connected.. her piece pp. 72 – 75
Viola:
__________
from pp
p. 72 – Viola Kup, Nicholas Kimeu
the last thing people from africa need, is a european speaking for them…
why do slums still exist? the people i met in the eastlands of nairobi are clever, creative, and innovative; they are not so different from my friends in germany. .. what makes it so difficult to get out of a slum?
refugee camps ness
it was not the first time friends of mine had great opportunities overseas but couldn’t attend because of denied visas or passport issues. what was the american embassy afraid of: the next obama? christopher fabian, co-lead of unicef innovation unit, presented the fantastic u-report, n which he pointed out the importance of promoting local leaders, designers and innovators:
we need to get away from the idea of projects and ‘projects for people,’ its’ not about some people doing a project for others.“ (vosloo, 2014)
but why is it that several successful projects still do need support “from outside”?
there is a lack of infrastructure – no electricity or electricity cuts, no water or water restriction no sanitation criminality, and slow internet – all of these problems and more slow projects down. but there are also challenges that i, as a european or privileged kenyans, will most likely never get to know. they are invisible to outsiders, and so i wonder where an how they will ever be verbalized or included as part of a report…..ie: you might not receive a visa because officials worry you might not return to your home country. if you want to register a community-based organization, you would not be able to do so without an address or a p.o. box, which most likely you don’t have if you live in a slum. how can you officially look for funds without being registered? […] if you are walking along the street with your laptop in your backpack, you may suddently find yourself on the ground with a gun in your mouth, and if you can’t show the receipt of your laptop, the police will think you have stolen it..
hamza – all the above..
all of these obstacle might not stop you from being creative and innovative, but they will slow you down.
i learned in the eastlands of nairobi that this”chatting” (social media chats) is not just making conversation but also networking. we all need networking to build up a career, but in environments like a slum, you need networking to survive. your network is everything. it’s your security and your insurance.
p. 72
david sengeh, who founded innovative salone in sierra leone spoke at the symposium. in a recent cnn article, he said: “as a sierra leonian who was given an opportunity to pursue biomedical engineering at harvard and now a phd at mit, i understand that a basic set of tools and a supporting platform are needed to transform good ideas into projects that impact an entire community: (sengeh 2012)
p. 73
solutions must be found locally, as outsiders don’t even know what exactly the problems are, no matter how many surveys we do and reports we read.
from nicholas kimeu, from usanii lab:
for us here in kenya, we all have our code like any other person around the globe which connects us together despite the ups and downs, and that’s creativity.
when things change, we all have to bend out imagination to fit to our course. we’re living in a time in which we are forced to use our energy and brain every second to reach our purpose in life, ..
everything matters, an extra diversion of the brain comes not from education that takes us to a more constrained level, but from within – from creativity.
and as the whole world is becoming a small global village, communication in different ways is being shared constantly and simultaneously, and this increases cultural diversity form one end to another. all of this is a theory of my own, as a creative individual.
p. 75
although i have no proper proof to sustain my theory, i have one example and that’s usanii lab,.. the most knowledge we have acquired in the street is more valuable that what we got from school…
_____________
be you. 