Maker's Asylum is a playground for artists, designers, engineers, doctors or anyone who wants to get their hands dirty and make their ideas happen! We started out of a garage in Bandra, Mumbai back in 2014 to create the first community makerspace in India. Maker’s Asylum is a community space focussed on fostering innovation through purpose based learning focussed on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The space houses various labs that are co-located in order facilitate prototyping of ideas that are interdisciplinary in nature.

While everything shut when India went into the biggest ever national lock-down on 23rd of March 2020, our team decided to self isolate at our space to keep making! The M-19 initiative started with a thought of giving only 1000 M-19 shields to the frontline workers. However, in 49 days we were able to activate 42 cities, towns and villages through our open source design and give over 1 Million M-19 face shields through #theM19Collective. 

The collective comprised of over 300 individuals/groups  who did not know each other but came together to stand for a common purpose. The M-19 shields are an ode to the power of a collective and truly represents self-sufficient local ecosystems - a new norm in a post #COVID19 world.

Out next project - the M-19 MAPR (Motorised Air Purifying Respirators) is ready to support sustainable PPE movement for frontline workers in India. The initiative is still active to support indigenous innovation. You can support at www.makersasylum.com/m19-shields or https://bit.ly/m19-mapr