ImagineMakers: a challenge launched with the Orange Foundation
It all started in October 2025, when the Orange Foundation launched the ImagineMakers call for projects. The mission was simple but ambitious: bring together FabLabs, nonprofits, and young people building their careers to design open, shareable solutions that could help strengthen local communities around the world in times of crisis. Inside FabLabs, ideas came quickly: how do you protect a home from flooding? Filter water without electricity? Stay connected when networks go down? Over the following weeks, project teams refined their ideas before submitting them to the challenge jury at the end of December.
The challenge itself isn’t new. For more than ten years, the Orange Foundation has been helping young people build skills and confidence through hands-on learning and collaborative projects. Originally focused on the Sustainable Development Goals, the program took on a new dimension this year with ImagineMakers, becoming part of the Emergency Commons initiative led by RFFLabs, the French FabLab network, alongside partners including the French Red Cross and Médecins Sans Frontières.
Innovating under pressure: the challenge behind the challenge
“The Covid crisis showed just how powerful citizen-led mobilization can be. It raised a bigger question: in other kinds of crises, where public responses may look very different, what role could makerspaces and FabLabs play in helping communities organize and respond?” explains Jeanne Piacentino, Emergency Commons Project Manager at RFFLabs.
ImagineMakers was designed to build on that momentum, helping create the future maker toolkit, a shared set of open solutions that can be used far and wide. To take part, every project had to meet a clear set of criteria: reproducibility, resilience, inclusion, and resource efficiency. “In a crisis, time is limited, resources are limited, and you have to be able to adapt quickly,” Jeanne Piacentino adds.
With that in mind, teams got to work designing solutions focused on energy autonomy, access to water and food, emergency communications, mutual aid, and citizen first aid.
Prototype, test, improve: the power of learning by doing
In workshops across mainland France, Guadeloupe, Côte d’Ivoire, Madagascar, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, every team rolled up their sleeves. They cut, tested, failed, rebuilt, and tried again. Through prototyping, young participants learned how to analyze real-world needs, iterate quickly, and document every step of their progress.
“We studied existing flood barriers and broke them down into four essential elements: watertightness, structure, assembly, and resistance,” explain Alexane, Wolfram, Annaëlle, Hicham, and Leïla, the young team behind the I(NON)dation project at Cap Science. “We built on something that already exists: Vauban barriers. The barrier provides the structure. Tarps and tape make it watertight. Cable ties and the existing slots handle the assembly. And wooden boards plus weights give it strength.”
In Côte d’Ivoire, the FabLab behind the onHoff project saw another kind of learning emerge. “Beyond coding, systems administration, and digital fabrication, the young makers learned what user-centered design really means. They had to simplify complex interfaces so they could be used by people under stress, or by people with very little digital experience.”
Projects recognized for being practical, shareable, and resource-smart
After being reviewed by the Orange Foundation, RFFLabs, and other humanitarian response experts, 14 projects were selected in January 2026. Their teams were then invited to further refine both their prototypes and the documentation behind them, all with one goal in mind: making it into the final three winning projects.
And in May, the results were in. In the “Citizen First Aid and Protection” category, the jury recognized I(NON)dation, developed by Cap Science in France, an open-source flood barrier built using Vauban barriers.
In the “Access to Water and Food” category, Purisource, developed in France by five young participants from Entreprendre pour Apprendre, took top honors. “The bottle folds down, and the filter cap can be removed and used with another bottle or container,” explain Rhamata, Khadidia, Awa, Casimiro, and Raphaël. A simple solution designed to make drinking water safe wherever you are.
The third winning project, onHoff from Côte d’Ivoire, an offline local communication network, impressed the jury with its practical, reproducible approach in the “Crisis Communication, Mutual Aid, and Energy Autonomy” category. All three teams received €6,000 to finalize their solutions. Their prototypes will be showcased at the Faire Festival in Toulouse from 28 to 30 May 2026, before being added to the Emergency Commons toolkit.
