Could you tell us how the 3-D Support Movement came out?

3-D support, not a planned programmatic movement, but a completely spontaneous formation… Our start point was ‘what can we do during pandemic period?’ and it came out at a point where we were looking for the answer to this question. When the first case in Turkey was announced, the question of “Will Turkey become Italy? was on the agenda. We also started a pioneering movement in Turkey in the field of 3-D printers.

We developed a Google Form In order to create a 3-D printer list in Turkey and shared it on Twitter at a midnight. When sharing, we added the note saying ‘we hope you won’t need’. If it turns into a situation like in Italy, we started with a fiction so that we can collect data on where 3-D printers are in Turkey, who is in the nearest hospital, and how to get 3-D printers, and this data is open source so that people can get here. Within 24 hours after we sent that tweet, many people and institutions from many provinces of Turkey signed up to the list. The owner of 3-D printer owners, some institutions and some individuals have applied to voluntarily participate in such a movement.

Do you have a strategy? What does 3-D support do in this office and in all cities of Turkey?

There’s no strategy but we’ve made some strategic decisions along the way.  We have been in contact with many institutions, Turkey’s very large industrial organizations have taken action to mobilize this process in some way. Some offered printers, some financing, some logistics or space allocation. Everyone supported within their means.

The origin of the 3-D support is the ‘maker’ culture. Maker means looking to produce something that makes constructive; the means of production of the new generation with those who do… Well, the point is, the work we do, the products we produce to ensure protective equipment for the health care workers to reach. The products we produce are visors, nasal apparatus, intubation box for healthcare workers (for stelization of the area), sampling cabin (to reduce the risk of contamination to healthcare workers) Actually, we are trying to shape our work based on pandemics. There are things we produce with 3D printers and without.

What exaclty we do: we have a website called www3boyutludestek.org. The health workers who enter this site, can request the protective equipment if they need. There is a Request button on our website. A form appears in front of them and through this form, people select the material they need and enter the information about the institution and how many and submit their request. After then our colleagues contact the health workers who made the request. And our colleague asks the producers ‘There’s a demand at this location, who can afford it?” The colleagues produce parts of the visor and combine it with the parts we send from the center and make it available for the health worker. After these products are prepared, logistics are provided and delivery is made to the relevant people with the contribution of the volunteers.

Originality of the 3-D Support Movement 

How do you define the 3-D Support Movement? A social enterprise, an NGO, a civil initiative… 

We define ourselves as a collective production movement. We are trying to make productions that will find solutions to social problems with the new generation tools we have. Today, this production continues with the production of visors and protective equipment for the healthcare workers to fight against the pandemic. Tomorrow, we will be able to position the producers from every region of Turkey as a network that can take action to solve a different need with the support of this network whenever it is needed.

Our difference from the other people, the institutions and the platforms that we don’t actually have an identity… About 3500 people and institutions involved in this movement, and about 5 thousand 3-D printers, all is the founder of this network… And these people represent the 3-D support movement in 81 provinces of Turkey. We created a 3-D Support Movement, an open platform, a pool.

The visor was not produced in the early stages of the pandemic. It could not even be supplied by making payments. Thanks to the contribution of collective production and the volunteering with the 3-D Support Movement, we have ensured that this is achieved by the health workers.

The 3-D support does not have any corporate identity. We’re going forward completely as an initiative. Some individuals or institutions get in touch with us in some way via 3boyutludestek.org and they ask how we do this so we explain them. There are people from different initiatives from the public to private sector who want to support and we work with them in one-on-one communication.

Can you tell me about the content of the products you use?

The raw material we use is polylactic acid, which we call PLA, a material that is completely sensitive to nature and soluble in nature…Therefore, we want to use raw materials that will somehow dissolve in the nature. Along with the benefit that our work provides to people, we also prevent damaging to the nature…We work with 3D Support, environmentally friendly raw materials and a sustainable production model. We have seen that there is an environmentally friendly sustainable production model.

Contributions of Working With A Wide Range Of Actors

 Isn’t it hard to work with so many different actors? 

Currently, we can contact to many institutions at the same time about different things and do organizational work.  We made a request to a few large industrial institutions in Turkey saying “Look…there is such a situation. There is a lot of demand on it. There are a lot of donors and people who want to support. Could you please send us professionals who could manage this crise?” The request was not met. That’s why we tried to figure it out ourselves. When we took responsibility, we saw that such problems can be solved.

Working with so many institutions has allowed us to fall into a discipline of multi-working. There are some problems due to the specific dynamics of some institutions. The fact that very large structures work a little slowly, some institutions cannot keep up with that speed… The biggest advantage for us was speed and digitalization. Some large institutions had shortcomings in this regard. But there were institutions that exceed it. There were problems arising from the fact that the institution was not very big, but that it moved slowly, that the people who took the initiative, were not capable of acting quickly. For example, one of the two very large institutions could be quick in taking action, while the other could cooperate with us a few months later. We are talking about many possibilities that digitalization brings but still in some institutions, rapid decision-making mechanisms and adaptation to the new normal are unfortunately very weak.

Did you have any moments of crisis in this period?

3-D support would not have arisen without an extraordinary situation such as a pandemic. 3-D support emerged as a solution in the crisis. We are a structure that is actually formed when the mass pushes us. We are a fully digital community. Our Twitter account has suspended for several times due to the high number of interactions. Due to so many unusual movements, it was very quick for us to appear out of nowhere and accelerate. We have seen that people who are not related to 3-D Support are in very different behaviors such as alightining on the efforts of thousands of volunteers of the 3D Support Movement. We had to deal with them in order to protect so many volunteer. In general, these are the problems developed instantly and solved. You suddenly have to solve something that comes out of nowhere and you have to take a very fast actions and immediately intervene it. The time constraint forced us a little.

 Can you talk about your cooperation and experience with civil society actors?

Obviously, there is a collaboration that we consider very special. We were in cooperation with the Nef Foundation due to the problems arising from some situations caused by the fact that the 3-D Support movement is not an institutional structure. With the support of the Nef Foundation, we made our work more institutional and the work we did became much more meaningful. When we first started, the number of products we produced were about 600 thousand but we were able to supply about 2 million products and deliver them to health workers with the support of the Nef Foundation.

New Generation Manufacture and Supply Chain

What do you consider yourself accomplished? Besides, what have you failed to achieve?

In fact, what this movement has showed us that the supply chain has been broken in many parts of the world. Before some problems caused by the mass production, we have shown that a new generation of production and supply chain are very possible with 3D printers. We have shown that everyone can produce something at home with 3 Dimensional Support movement. We have shown that everyone can produce a product they want in a network. We have shown that there is nothing that cannot be achieved with the social support, with the collective spirit.

We are an audience with a high technology usage. Here we are talking about the new generation production tools. Today we talk about 3-D printers, tomorrow we can talk about other coding tools, the next day we can talk about completely different products then this one.

3-D support movement, as a collective production movement, is now a production network ready to solve any problem. We are organized in 81 provinces of Turkey and we have representatives and producer friends in every province. When it is necessary some actions can be taken or operate for any different operation by using this network. We are currently fictionalizing it… At this point, we want to do works that will generate social benefit with the work we will do.

What we have failed to achieve is that this organizational process has increased very quickly, because it is a work that we do with volunteers only, we reach some health workers late… We have tried to involve as many people as possible in this process because it is a work that is completely initiative in a completely volunteer network. Therefore, we have been working to reach healthcare professionals directly and to include producers directly in this network. Maybe we could keep our communication with the public stronger and proceed in a more coordinated way.

What did the 3D Support experience add to you personally? What did you learn?
The biggest thing I’ve learned is to come across the concept of social utility. It’s not something we know, but we’re very familiar with. Although I am currently involved in civil society, we saw a little more limited what civil society could do as this work was not as intense as 3-D Support. However, we have seen that this is not the case with 3D Support and the impact of social benefit-oriented works on people is very different. At the moment, we are trying to match 3D Support studies with completely social benefit oriented works. We’re trying to plan this.

Sustainability of 3-D Support Movement: a call for cooperation and a request for support

 How does this movement ensure its sustainability financially and institutionally?

We are a structure that stands up with the support of volunteers.  We act on a voluntary basis in the financing of this business. We are also working to create a sustainable production model. Obviously we need all sorts of support.

Everyone who has a 3D printer in 81 provinces of Turkey, is registered on this network. No one is hesitating about using their printers and converting the material. Anyone who has a 3-D printer in their home and make production, spends their own filament, the raw material of 3-D printers,  Therefore, we are trying to send the raw materials of 3-D printers to these volunteers and enable them to continue their production. In order to achieve this, we released this filament, which is the raw material of the products, with our own name. These filaments are sold on e-commerce sites. Anyone can buy them and produce on a 3-D printer or donate them to those involved in the 3-D support movement.

Did increase in the case numbers reflect on you? Do you have a request for the support or a call for the cooperation?

Currently, there is some increase in the number of requests that come to us. Considering that we are a completely voluntary movement, we are open to all kinds of support for the continuity of our work. We know that organizations that carry out corporate social responsibility (CSR) have a lot to contribute to this field as we know from our collaborators. We need all kinds of support, especially healthcare professionals, who want to support those who do something meaningful to fight against COVID-19.

Actually, we have a call for all institutions. Especially, we want it very much. We are experiencing problems when it comes to raw materials. We would like to be in contact with any institution that can provide us the raw material itself or its financing. Because it is completely voluntary, we cannot continue this production once the raw material is cut off. In terms of its circulation, the raw material is important in terms of continuity. We would like to work with the institutions that will support for the protective equipment for the health workers. Therefore, our expectation from the people who will contribute to 3-D Support Movement, is financial support for the raw material supply.

İlker Vardarlı, the other founder of the 3-D Support Movement, stated that they are open to any kinds of cooperation and support, emphasizing that new projects can be developed by using the 3-D support network of the companies, public institutions and NGOs.

Saying that the biggest advantage of the 3D Support Movement is that it can also offer a mass production opportunity in Turkey, Vardarlı makes the following determinations; The achievements of the “3-D Support Movement are obvious. The point we failed: I think we thought very social benefit oriented.  We could make this beautiful organization sustainable. We could gather a small amount of support and invest in the future. This movement have emerged during COVID period but in the future we can also do different projects such as street animals, village schools. But, not today. That is because we didn’t think about today and create an income model when we first started. When I look back, I can see that we made a mistake here.”

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