Apply here for GOSH's 2022 Regional Events Funding! (Round 1)

Opportunities
12

1. Name of organization

  • reGOSH Mendoza Node, Argentina
  • Centro de Educación, Formación e Investigación Campesina (CEFIC) (or Peasant Center for Education and Research)

2. Email address (or preferred and reliable way of official contact)

reGOSH - Mendoza Node pablocremades@gmail.com

CEFIC cefic.tierra@gmail.com

3. Tell us about your organization

About reGOSH

reGOSH is a network connecting people, communities and institutions in Latin America and the Caribbean, working on Free and Open Source Hardware for science, entrepreneurship and education. Its mission is to strengthen, make visible and connect the work of those who study, develop and use open technologies for science and education in the region, facilitating the exchange of knowledge, resources and experiences and linking them with the global community. Today, the network spans 7 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean (Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Perú, México) and can be considered as the regional chapter of GOSH global community.

reGOSH main activity consists of running annual events or “residencies” that gather its members to collaboratively work on open hardware prototypes for three weeks. reGOSH has secured funding from CYTED, the Iberoamerican programme of science and technology, until 2023. These funds can only cover mobility costs of reGOSH members for attending reGOSH annual events (“residencies”). These funds can’t be used for any other expenses than air tickets for members, even in a pandemic context… In 2022 the reGOSH residency will be held in Mendoza, Argentina.

The Mendoza node in Argentina has been a co-founding member and an active participant of reGOSH since its inception, shaping its agenda and activities. Its members develop work on open technologies both in academia (mainly National Cuyo University), and in civil society organizations such as CEFIC and the Ayllú Cooperative.

About CEFIC

CEFIC is a space for education and research on agroecology and food sovereignty. It is run by the “Unión de Trabajadores Sin Tierra (UST)”, a peasant organization born in early 2000. It is connected to regional and international organizations, including the Coordinadora Latinoamericana de Organizaciones del Campo (CLOC) and Via Campesina. CEFIC is located in the rural area north of the city of Mendoza, with 3 hectares of dedicated experimental fields and infrastructure to hold gatherings, workshops and events.

Some members of the Mendoza Node also work in academic settings. They mostly develop their work at the Interdisciplinary Laboratory of Open Technology for Science (LITEC). The lab is part of the Natural and Exact Sciences College at National University of Cuyo (FCEN-UNCuyo).

Background and previous activities

The Mendoza node has already organized several workshops on open science hardware in academic contexts:

Furthermore, it has organized several activities in rural contexts, many of them together with CEFIC:

  • “Jornadas de diálogo de saberes sobre suelos”, with CEFIC in 2019.
  • Socio educative practices: “Las Tecnologías libres y abiertas para el cuidado ambiental como puente entre la Universidad y la Escuela Campesina Agroecológica de Jocolí” together with UST, Escuela Campesina Agroecológica and UNCuyo during 2020.
  • Workshop cycle AgroPacha organized together with Ayllu Cooperative as remote events of project UROS during 2021.
  • A 10-day residency, hosting @naikymen and Juan Fernández Zaragoza for a DIY soil microbiology workshop on Ayllu Cooperative grape farm.

Today the Mendoza node is working together with CEFIC and Coop. Ayllu in the Open Agroecology Lab. Agroecology research is scarce in official research agendas dominated by industrial agriculture. The proposal aims to integrate several low cost and open source methods and instruments into an open lab, to generate local appropriate knowledge for the agroecological transition in the region. This year, with support from Mendoza node and founded by Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, the first Lab will be materialized at CEFIC.

4. Does your organization have representation for a marginalized demographic due to factors such as, but not limited to, race, ability, place of birth, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic class situation or other identification? If so, how?

Our organizations develop their everyday work in the so-called Global South. We face a complex context of chronic economic crisis and socio-environmental conflict due to constant pressure on natural resources. Research budgets are highly limited, which makes us work with scarce resources even in well-established academic laboratories.

Our reGOSH node is in constant dialogue (and cowork) with actors of many different backgrounds (ie. peasants, farmers, school teachers). On the other hand, as part of reGOSH we recognize there is gender bias in open hardware as in other STEM fields. reGOSH intentionally addresses this issue in its activities, while having a gender-balanced board of node coordinators. We consider inclusion as meaningful participation, aligning our work with the GOSH manifesto. This is why we focus on co-creation of open source tools so participants can appropriate them to address their own relevant problems or questions.

As a result of the ongoing dialogues between academic and rural knowledge(s) in the node, in 2011 CEFIC created the Escuela Campesina de Agroecología (Peasant school of agroecology). This secondary school for teenagers and adults works with a pedagogic model of alternation: students’ activities alternate between the formal education setting and community-based work. In 2021, CEFIC created the Tecnicatura en Agronomía con orientación en Agroecología (Bachelor in Agronomy, specialization in Agroecology). Both, the secondary school and the bachelor program, emerged from dialogue with peasant communities and in response to the need for pedagogical processes that respect the characteristics of the communities and value their knowledge.

5. What is the event about, and what do you want to achieve with it?

We want to organize a Regional gathering of open science hardware as part of thereGOSH/Cyted 2022 residency, in September 2022.

The event will gather Latin American developers, maintainers, users and researchers of open science hardware. We will involve members of reGOSH and aim to expand the network and attract new members. The 4-day event will be an opening instance of the residency, contextualizing the technical work on prototypes.The combination of the event and the residency will ensure the participation of a diversity of profiles interested in open science hardware.

The structure of the event will follow the GOSH events’ framework, with unconference sessions, hands-on workshops and collective agenda-building activities. Both events will take place during september 2022. Core themes will be: open hardware for education, agroecology, environment, and health.

Main activities will take place at FCEN-UNCuyo in Mendoza city, while other activities will take place in the rural installations of CEFIC.

During the coming months we will work to build the programme in collaboration with local and regional partners. Moreover, we want to involve some community folks from global GOSH to share their experience with us and strengthen global connections. We already started conversations with Greg Austic @gbathree, as his work at the Bionutrient Institute is locally relevant and because of his connections with the GOAT Community. We are also working with Julieta Arancio @jarancio, as her knowledge of the local open science scene and experience facilitating previous gatherings is instrumental for running the event.

The main goal of this event is to establish solid links between open science hardware advocates and current/potential users of the tools that allow the design of a common agenda and appropriate strategies for advancing it in Latin America. We believe these conversations can add a “reality-check” to the open science hardware activities of our network, and useful lessons for the global community. Another goal of this event is to raise the profile of open hardware in the open science scene, which is quite active in Argentina. We aim to attract local and regional media, connect with potentially interested policy makers and establish the Mendoza node as a reference for open science hardware. Finally, we aim to grow the reGOSH network, both in terms of attracting new members and developing capabilities in existing participants.

As regional outcomes, we expect to grow and consolidate the open science hardware community in Latin America, raising its profile as an opportunity to address systemic technological dependence and lack of scientific equipment. We also expect to diversify the audience of regional open science hardware activities, extending the scientific and technological dialogue outside formal institutions to work and build a common agenda around relevant regional themes.

On a global level, we believe an outcome of this event will be to fuel highly contextualized, experience-based conversations to advance the open science hardware agenda, and build key connections to exchange lessons with global GOSH…

6. Which of the three levels of funding would you like to apply for? (in round 1 only USD $9910 is available for applications, in further rounds $3000, $6000, or USD $9910 will be available)

Round 1: USD $9910

7. What is the funding for? Describe your budget. List what you are going to spend it on and how.

This is our planned budget for the Regional GOSH funding:

  1. Airplane tickets for global GOSH members $ 4000
  2. Airplane tickets for key participants that we want to involve in reGOSH but are not part of the network yet $ 1500
  3. Tools and materials for workshops $ 1000
  4. Communication $ 500
  5. Operational expenses (catering, per diem) $ 1210
  6. Accommodation $ 1200
  7. General organization $ 500

reGOSH/Cyted 2022 residency travel and accommodation of regional network members are already funded by CYTED.

8. How will you share the outcomes of this event? What documentation will result that will benefit the community as a whole? (videos? photos? a how-to? innovative hardware designs?)

We will present and share the documentation of all designs resulting from the residency in Gitlab, and document all sessions and workshops held during the event in the GOSH forum.

We will work and document a common regional agenda around relevant themes in line with the global GOSH Roadmap.

All these materials will be released under a CC-BY 4.0 license, hardware and software under CERN OHL and MIT/GNU GPL.

To facilitate reuse of this information, summaries of each prototype and day of the event will be documented in blogposts published in reGOSH website. As long as participants provide media consent, we will produce audiovisual documentation of the event and work on prototypes. We will contact local media and press offices at university to increase the visibility of the event.

9. How would your event address GOSH’s values of diversity and inclusion?

We will translate and be respectful of the GOSH manifesto and will follow the guidelines for selection of participants and other recommendations from the GOSH community events framework.

As such, diversity and inclusion will be a transversal strategy, embedded in calls for participants, participants selection, and running the event. We will post the call to participate on the forum in English, Spanish and Portuguese; communication materials will be distributed online and offline, according to what is best to involve a diversity of knowledges. Facilitation techniques will also be designed to contemplate the context in which we run the event, in particular to include non-academic participants into activities run in academic venues

10. Are there any conflicts of interest that you wish to declare?

@nanocastro and @jarancio are part of the evaluating team of Regional funds, but will excuse themselves for the evaluation of this proposal.

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