What is it?
Home.Work is a mobile toolbox that enables people to make a home a home, when they need it most. Designed with the needs of people living in isolated refugee camps in Greece in mind, Home.Work transforms from a toolbox to a home workstation in a matter of minutes. The box includes all the tools needed to repair and build stuff, and create a garden, too.
Home.Work was built and piloted with the community in Katsikas Refugee Camp, which is a new but barren home to nearly 1,000 refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Congo and many other places. Inspired by the Habibi.Works humanitarian fab lab, this simple idea helps re-engage talented and motivated makers who, because of circumstances beyond their control, are now refugees.
reece is a new home to nearly 70,000 refugees and asylum seekers. Many of them live in container camps, where they will have to stay until they are granted asylum, a process which can take many years. They have limited access to educational, cultural or recreational activities, and spend most of their days sitting in their containers. A space’s design can have a huge effect on a person’s mental well-being, so enabling people to create a home in this new space is a psychosocial intervention and a tool for independence.
Mobile, multi-functional and low-cost, Home.Work is a product that can easily be deployed to contexts of displacement and marginalization, to give agency to affected communities.
What are we doing?
We created a box, which is handy but big enough to hold garden tools. It is filled with tool donations, and contains all tools necessary to maintain a house or garden and even do repair work and extensions. The box was built with the Katsikas community members and will then be taken to different camps by members of the community. This way, we will build trust, make connections and demonstrate how people can take their destiny into their own hands through the creation of their three dimensional surroundings. Committees of responsible people will be formed, and have signed an agreement to ensure the tool box is shared and people help each other, in order to reject all forms of exclusivity.
The communal work and mutual support then began!
We stay in contact with the users, who can reach us 24/7 in case of questions or feedback. In addition, we visit them from time to time.
Why are we doing it ?
Creating our three-dimensional environment is a human need, which should be a right for every person.
Being able to create something demonstrates a person’s ability to change and alter something, and to be self-determinatory. This contributes to integration and to aworthy active, productive life, in a context of continuous frustration and endless waiting.
Additionally, the access to tools makes an economic difference and addresses primary needs. People who are forced to live in refugee camps in Greece don’t want help. They want to be able and empowered to help themselves.
People build the boxes, at Habibi.Works. Therefore, the users are included in the entire process. In Home.Work, it is the communities that benefit from the very beginning until the end. We enable people to help themselves and others around them.
The Team
The entire Habibi.Works project team stands behind this project. The team is a mix of social workers, human rights activists and engineers. Because of the project set-up, a huge part of the team is made up of the users.
My name is Thomas Jäger and I am a product design student at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Offenbach. In our society, products currently have immense meaning and impact. Well-designed and thought through products can directly influence the living conditions of many people.
This is why I have decided to apply my abilities and knowledge to something more meaningful than, for example, testing thousands of Hi-Fi-constructions on their radius. I want to change the living conditions of those who need it most, using the power of well-designed and thought through products!
This is how I came to work with Habibi.Works, which I have been part of, on site, for more than a year. I remember how fascinated I was at first by the impact of this project. I quickly became friendly with many of the people who came to the project, and as a result, understood the importance and necessity of access to tools – which up to this point only Habibi.Works provided – in this context. I also noticed during my stay the importance, yet lack of, mobility available to people. Many only have access to places where specific work and employment opportunities are offered during specific opening hours.
This is good, but what happens, for example, if a screwdriver is needed Sunday night in a distant camp, to provide light for children to do their homework?
How can you help ?
Firstly, pick one of the rewards and help us set up the pilot in time!!!
We are more than grateful: the people using the box even more. Thanks!
Secondly stay in touch, get a fan on Facebook and spread the word.
habibi.works/home-work
www.facebook.com/HomeWork-2228706760716725/
www.Instagram.com/home.work_enablement
