Orange Egypt for Telecommunications SAE : Celebrates “FabLab Egypt”, First Place Winner of the Orange Solidarity FabLab Challenge #I_make_4_my_city

Thursday, May 05, 2016

Orange Egypt Celebrates 'FabLab Egypt', First Place Winner of the Orange Solidarity FabLab Challenge #I_make_4_my_city

Orange Egypt celebrated the FabLab Egypt Team, winner of the Jury Award on 21st April for the Solidarity Fablab international challenge with a EUR 15 thousand worth of prize. The Fab Lab Egypt team focused on the country's challenges regarding access to quality education through producing a simple open source kit to learn how to make a robot.

The celebration was held by the Orange Foundation for all fablabs in its network under the Solidarity Fablab Program to encourage youth to become more innovative and creative in devising projects using digital technology. 6 countries from Africa and Europe participated with a total of 16 projects where the French and Tunisian projects also won in the same competition.

This came during the visit of Christine Albanel, Senior Executive Vice-President in charge of Corporate Social Responsibility, Events, Partnerships and Inclusiveness and Deputy Chair of the Orange Foundation and Chair of Orange Studio. 'FabLabs empower creativity in society and allow for innovation and collaboration by increasing efficiency and capabilities of local human cadres. In addition, they offer entrepreneurs a real opportunity to create models of their creative ideas and transform them to start-ups,' Albanel said.

She added, 'In Orange, we are excited to spread Orange Foundation's Solidarity FabLab Program in all company's branches in different countries as an important part of the company's corporate social responsibility program (CSR).'

On his part, Eng. Ashraf Halim, Orange Egypt's Chief Commercial Officer, said, 'In continuation of Orange Egypt's initiative to train and employ 100 thousand Egyptians, we are supporting FabLab Egypt to enhance digital education and increase young people's participation to allow for various fields of training and create job opportunities.'

He pointed out that 'the company has an ambitious plan to spread Fab Lab Egypt's in the Egyptian market and be present in several governorates in Egypt through inaugurating five centers to benefit from youth's experience and creative ideas. The Zagazig governorate branch has actually been inaugurated and work is underway to inaugurate another center in Ismailia and other governorates. Orange has all mechanisms needed to transform leading projects to concrete ideas and empower a new generation of entrepreneurs, providing them with real opportunities'.

He added, 'We are working on preparing several branches for FabLab Egypt in different governorates and providing them with the latest technological tools. This includes the latest digital equipment such as 3D printers; laser cutting units, 3D scanning units, digital guidance software, open design software, as well as digital devices that will help embody ideas and models in a few hours.'