Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “National Maker Faire: Rethinking Prosthetics with Women Veterans”.
Hi, i’m dale dougherty and we’re here at the national maker faire at udc, and one of the more interesting exhibits here is the girls lounge, and i have three people here to tell me about it: i’ll actually have them introduce themselves and then um we’ll talk a Little bit more about it, i’m andrea polito, i’m a presidential innovation, fellow at the department of veterans affairs, i’m darren, dodds, co-founder of field ready and may work at maine space and i’m heather irvine from the girls lounge okay. So we got heather and andrea from the girls lounge and – and you like many, you always find your way into really interesting programs, so um so tell us uh. This is really cool, you’re, working with veterans and particularly female veterans, and trying to redefine what prosthetics are and what they look like, and how do we feel about them exactly exactly so. The va center for innovation is here with the girls lounge and what we’re doing is launching the va innovation creation series, where our aim is to accelerate the development of prosthetics and assistive technologies for veterans and, in particular, our female veterans, because our female veterans they want To co-create co-design they have unique needs just like every human being does, and so what we’re here is amplifying the message on with the girls lounge and how we can really design with 3d printing these personalized technologies for our female veterans. Okay, heather.
Can you tell me what how you were involved sure so the girls lounge is all around empowering confidence for women and we wanted to come here and bring visibility for those females with prosthetics that don’t have the customization or the beauty. Side of you know, utilities fine, but they want to feel really good and stand tall. So we wanted to bring visibility to women in stem like dara, who are building these products and giving them that confidence that they need. Dara tell me a bit what you’re doing here, so i’m here to support the girls lounge and the veterans challenge primarily working with 3d printing, because now, with 3d printing, as you know, dale of all people.
Now we can do um, mass customization and as just to echo, what andrea is saying is it’s really important with women’s needs, particularly female amputees, a lot of things, people don’t think about. Well, we have prosthetics for for men and women, they’re very unisex they’re, usually too big, they’re, too cumbersome and frankly, you can’t really hook a bra with them. You can’t hold stabilize an eyeliner there’s so there’s little things like that that we really want to build into these prosthetics for women and that’s what we’re here to talk about, and so i’m supporting with 3d printing. That’S great and you’ve been involved made in space. You’Ve been involved with, you, know, field ready and down in haiti, and so this is just another uh way of linking. You know some of this technology up to something that’s really valuable, something that’s very human and and that’s – and we were talking about this earlier, though, at maker faire barrier we had a fashion show with women, uh wearing prosthetics and the disabled, women differently, abled women wearing Them – and it was beautiful right – it was really uh inspiring to see that and that’s part of what you’re trying to do here exactly so we’re having a make-a-thon on july 28th and 29th at the richmond va medical center and we’re actually going to be having a Fashion show at that event working with our female veterans to really show off these prosthetics, these 3d printed prosthetics, to show them that they can be confident and beautiful. How can people get involved in that makeathon? If you go to innovation.va.gov challenge, you can find out more and so we’re so excited for you, but it’s open to open to the public open to the public foreign. That’S great! Well! This is great great to have you here at national maker faire and talking to people about it. It you know it’s a it’s a very important thing and and uh um. You know it’s like.
I said about it: you’re kind of hacking, the prosthetic world right. You know you’re getting people to think differently about it. So again, thanks for talking to me, thank you very much. .