Toloka is a traditional way of showing solidarity through the provision of physical support in Ukraine. With that in mind, German and Ukrainian partners with support from the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) co-created the Tolocar project just a few weeks after the start of the full-scale Russian* invasion of Ukraine. The goal of the project is to support both the emergency relief activities, and the development of a participatory innovation ecosystem for the socio-economic recovery of Ukraine.
With a fleet of mobile makerspaces at its core, Tolocar brings together experts from the fields of making, distributed manufacturing, and urban planning with civil society organizations in Ukraine to:
▶ Harness Ukraine's digital innovation capacity to meet urgent humanitarian needs
▶ Strengthen decentralized production systems at partner locations, such as displaced businesses, makerspaces or community workshops
▶ Support both new and existing stationary makerspaces
▶ Develop the capacities of Ukrainian makers and makerspace managers
▶ Expand the reach of Ukrainian makers by connecting them to national, regional, and global maker networks
This book is written with two audiences in mind: As an unprecedented project, we lacked a road map that we could turn to - so we wrote one for other practitioners. Furthermore, the process of producing the playbook allowed us to reflect on the potential of mobile makerspaces to make a significant impact at relatively low costs. Our aspiration is to position mobile makerspaces as valuable instruments for those funding innovative humanitarian emergency responses and development cooperation globally.
A playbook is a collection of strategies, tactics and moves of a (sports) team, and thus by definition not meant to be normative or prescriptive in any and every situation. This playbook thus reflects our iterative and pluralistic approach. By offering our best practices, lessons learned, as well as specific challenges that we faced and solutions that we came up with (sometimes through multiple iterations) we aim to initiate conversations with others who are interested in the topic: makers, humanitarian and development practitioners, researchers, product and process innovators, civil society organizations and the private sector.
Our conversation starts with Why Tolocar in order to lay the foundation by introducing key terminology, as well as the concept of distributed manufacturing and its requisite enabling technologies. Our approach How To Tolocar is detailed in the second part of the playbook along with insights into our fleet and team, and our comprehensive checklist. We illustrate the impact of the Tolocar project on Ukrainian makers and civil society through Tolocar Stories. Here we focus on various interventions in diverse locations, spanning over a year of operation within a nation fighting against the invasion of its former imperialist ruler. Finally, we provide an outlook on our future plans to support the Ukrainian innovation ecosystem for the inclusive socio-economic recovery of the country - and how we hope that the Tolocar project will inspire others worldwide.
But first, let us take you to Chernihiv in the north of Ukraine through a Tolocar Story.
* We are aware that in Ukraine, the convention is now to use lowercase letters: "russia". As a publication by GIZ, we use the grammatical correct convention.
The Playbook is available in print and PDF via https://playbook.tolocar.org/ reflecting the status of the project in August 2023. Thanks to Appropedia, the playbook is also a living document that will evolve as the project progresses. We encourage continuous learning, experimentation, and adaptation to achieve sustainable and impactful outcomes. Please join the conversation online!
