Background

The e-NABLE community grew out of a comment made by Jon Schull on a YouTube post showing a young boy named Liam in South Africa receiving a 3D printed hand. That hand came out of a collaboration between Ivan Owen and Richard van As, 2 people living continents apart. They pooled their resources and knowledge, shared their designs, and changed the life of a child they'd never met.

The beginning of something big

Jon Schull, founder of the e-NABLE community, saw that video, put together a Google map, posted it in the comments section of the video, and asked people to pin themselves if they wanted to help make a hand for someone. The map went from several hundred pins to roughly 5,000 in just 1.5 years. And the designs have far eclipsed that first design. e-NABLE hopes to wrangle that excitement into a scalable and organized non-profit to ensure the collective energy translates into action, progress, and the democratic distribution of devices to people who need them.

Everything is open

With e-NABLE, we found the open source development model, where users become designers, playing out in a hardware community. We found a research and development model where users become designers. We found a burgeoning open hardware maker community on the verge of disrupting an entire industry. What's more, we found people from a variety of backgrounds who want to help those they've never met. At Red Hat, everything we do is built around these same principles of collaboration as it relates to design and making things better. Whether it's writing code, activating a community, or helping a child in need, open source plays an important role in lives across the globe.

About e-NABLE

You can learn more about the projects within this organization, volunteer to make something with your 3-D printer, and donate funds by visiting enablingthefuture.org.

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