👋 Matt Shigekawa and Apple Catherine Acosta are the co-founders of #operationMake residing in Irvine, California. Matt is a #ProjectManagementProfessional in the Healthcare Technology industry and U.S. Marine Veteran and Apple is an #ERNurse at several hospitals in Orange County, California. For Apple’s birthday earlier this month, Matt had limited options to help celebrate due to the #stayAtHome order but remembered how her and fellow nurses at the hospitals were complaining about having to re-use the same #PPE over several days/weeks and experienced pain from wearing their protective masks over 12 hour shifts.
🖨️ After hearing remarkable stories about hundreds of volunteers 3D printing ear savers, face shields, and masks from their homes, Matt purchased their 1st 3D printer kit and quickly got it setup and cranking out dozens of ear savers for Apple and her fellow healthcare friends, family, and co-workers.
🏥 In a couple of weeks as the word spread, the couple personally made and donated a little over a 1,000 #earSavers to local hospitals and healthcare facilities including: #UCIMedicalCenter, #UCLAMedicalCenter, #CalStateLA, #MissionHospital, #AnaheimRegionalHospital, #TorranceMemorialHospital, #Hoag, #Kaiser, #ManorCare, #OCSheriffs.
👨💻 Unable to keep of with the demand, Matt drew from his #agileProjectManagement background to create operationMake.org as a way to help connect other volunteer #makers directly with the donation requests from nurses, 1st responders, and essential workers across the nation using a decentralized #leanAgile approach offering full transparency from request to fulfillment and eliminating the need of a middleman. With the success of Operation Make, Matt created the Lean Agile Donations Management Framework to help share this approach with the entire volunteer community (see more about the LADM Framework).
🌎 Today there are over 20 volunteers from around the world on the Open Request Board helping fulfill donation requests and is rapidly growing.
📢 In the coming weeks we are excited to share the stories of all of these amazing volunteers in the #3DPrinting community stepping up to help our local communities along with the healthcare workers, 1st responders, and essential workers on the front lines fighting COVID-19.
Matt Shigekawa and Apple Catherine Acosta
