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Hands before screens
Children leave holding something they made. Screens are a tool for making, never the activity itself.
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About Airdrie Maker Lab
A makerspace is a workshop where people turn ideas into real things using tools, materials, and each other. Airdrie Maker Lab is that, for children aged 8 to 15 — and it is deliberately built so that what a family earns does not decide whether their child gets in.
A local workshop for Airdrie families who want practical, joyful STEAM learning — at a price nobody has to think twice about.
Why some kids pay nothing
Hands-on STEM in this region is sold as a premium product, at around $200 a term. Priced that way, a workshop like ours reaches the children who need it least and misses the ones it would change most. We could see who would never walk through the door.
So every family picks what they pay, and one of the options is zero. Families who can pay full price, and supporters who fund places, cover the difference. Nobody is asked to prove anything.
What we hold to
Children leave holding something they made. Screens are a tool for making, never the activity itself.
No means-testing at the door. No child is ever identified as the one who did not pay. Dignity is a design requirement, not a nicety.
Projects are allowed to break. Instructors are trained to treat a failed build as the most useful moment in the session.
Actual 3D printers, actual soldering irons, actual CAD. Age-appropriate supervision, not toy substitutes.
Published finances, a public annual report, and impact numbers we did not choose to flatter ourselves.
Who runs it
Co-founder
Uche is a mechanical engineer, designer, and maker who believes children should meet practical design, fabrication, and problem-solving early — long before anyone tells them whether they are a “STEM person”.
His background in product design, CAD, and hands-on technology shapes how the Lab teaches children to build, test, and improve. He is also involved in maker-centred education through CoMakers Africa.
Co-founder
Chino is a mechanical engineer with extensive experience in project management, people management, and organisational leadership.
He is also a pastor and community development leader, and brings a deeply people-focused perspective to how the Lab is run and who it is for.
Uche and Chino lead Airdrie Maker Lab and intend to keep doing so. Running it well is a full-time job, and we intend to keep doing it for a long time.
The long-term aim is a place where families see real progress, children build useful skills, and the city grows its own designers, builders, and fixers.