Finance Colombia executive editor Loren Moss caught up with a busy Paul Harris for an update on preparations for this year’s event, slated for November 8-9 at the Medellín Hotel Intercontinental. Moss will be a speaker at this year’s event covering mining technology investment, and major sponsors include GlobeXplore Drilling & Analytics, OilRed/Chevron, ALS, and Cordoba Minerals. Women In Mining Colombia and the Viva Air Foundation are supporting the Women In Mining Initiative.

Finance Colombia: I have always known your publication as Colombia Gold Letter. I know that you have been expanding. Now, you are doing more and more in Ecuador, and we want to talk about that and understand the broader scope that you have now. But then it is good to see that the Colombia Gold Symposium continues to grow. I noticed that you changed the venue, it is now going to be in the Hotel Intercontinental which I think provides more space for exhibits and meetings, but the event has always been full, so, tell me about what precipitated the change of venue and tell me about how the scope may be evolving or changing.

Paul Harris: Absolutely. This year will be our 7th event and it’s every year in November; and a couple of years ago because of our success, because we were every year selling out, we were becoming constrained by the size of the venue. Previously, we were in the San Fernando Plaza, so we were planning on shifting the event to the Hotel Intercontinental here in Medellin because it is a much bigger hotel, it has got a much bigger conference space and that plan was derailed a little bit by COVID.

Obviously, in 2020, we did a virtual event because of lockdown and people could not travel and then in 2021, last year when things started opening up, we were not certain to what extent, and how quickly things will open up, to what extent people would want to travel and things of that nature. So, last year we held it in the Marriott Hotel, which is a really good venue and it was a great event, but it is a venue that is very size restricted. So, this year we are going to hold it at the Hotel Intercontinental which is a good conference facility where we can have 400 or 500 people, we can have a much bigger exhibition space and so that is really the plan.

It is going to be a two-day event, again, this has been every year, and a big focus on the projects. It is now called CGS Medellin because as you mentioned earlier this year in June with did our first event in Quito (CGS Quito) and so CGS Medellin focuses on the gold projects in Colombia and hopefully the broader region as well. One of the key things this year, would be the discussing the change in government we will be discussing how government is relating to the mining sector and how it’s looking to develop the mining sector obviously, change things of that nature, so promising to be a very exciting, a very important event this year.

Finance Colombia: What your sense is as far as the optimism or pessimism or uncertainty from the mining sector with regards to what the policies might be with the new administration?

 Paul Harris: Well, that’s a very big question and there are a lot of unknowns, yet. You have mentioned a few things. Gustavo Petro has named a Mining and Energy minister and it is someone, a mining engineer that has generally been seen as a positive in as much as presumably he has an understanding of the sector, some of its issues and its potential as well. Gustavo Petro has spoken out, as you mentioned, against the oil and gas sector, he has stated categorically that there is not going to be fracking on his watch, and he wants Colombia to be less dependent on the oil and gas and coal sector for income generation.

He has not really announced so much on the mining sector. By mining sector, we are talking here about hard rock mining, gold, copper, silver, things of that nature. That sector is a much smaller sector in Colombia than oil and gas. It is a sector that typically employs more people than the oil and gas sector does so, there could be a differentiation in his approach to the two sectors or sub-sectors because a lot of people are employed in the mining sector and he has positioned himself as a president for the people, one that is going to create opportunities, work towards greater equality and various different spheres.

So, from that point of view, one could imagine that he might embrace the mining sector because of his ability to create a lot of jobs in rural areas, areas that typically have not received a greater development or economic benefit traditionally being ignored by the central government out of Bogota. Your reference to the Vice-president, Francia, it perhaps could be instructive there way back in the early years of her life. I believe she was an artisanal miner in really a very basic form of panning gold, that kind of activity. So, that’s a huge activity in Colombia, tens of thousands of people earn their daily bread through that activity. So, one would expect the Petro administration to try and work to help that sector, to help perhaps formalize it, to help people working in that sector, create access to the financial system, provide access to health, to education things of that which historically they have not had access to.

It is unclear what the Petro administration will mean for more formal mining with larger companies. On the one hand, he could see them as put it in the same pocket as the oil and gas sector, see them as a, let’s say, the enemy; on the other hand, he could embrace them as a means of creating economic opportunities in rural areas and, time will tell.

Finance Colombia: I think that also it is easier to hold a commercial mining operation accountable, demand that they have things like environmental risk insurance, that they are paying their taxes, employing labor laws; I know that there’s been some innovations where some of the commercial mine operations actually working with artisanal miners say: “Hey, don’t go and get some cyanide and mercury and poison ýourself and your family trying to refine ore, just bring your ore to us and we will process it for you.” So, I think that that would be an incentive and also it is a way to keep artisanal miners from working with mafias and those types of organizations at the margins of the law so, he might be able to use, to leverage the commercial mining activity as a social lever with the with artisanal miners, no?

Paul Harris: Yes, absolutely. A lot of the formal mining companies and the exploration companies do have programs to work with artisanal miners, to help them with things such as improving their environmental performance, helping them get a better, fair price for their product, helping them with things like health and safety, helping formalize so they can get access to the financial system, legally trade the gold that they produce, get access to the Social Security service in Colombia and health and things like that. It really depends on the viewpoint or the attitude of the government, the incoming government takes

As I mentioned, on one hand, there is the view that mining is an activity run by foreign companies that are here to exploit us. On the other hand, another view is that because mining exploration companies are very embedded in rural communities where the state often does not reach, they do and can act as an anchor for the local economy generating prosperity, generating benefits, generating a local tax base so the local mayors actually have money to spend, to invest in different things.

I would say that speaking to somebody in the Ministry of Mining and Energy today, that had been going through the handover process with the incoming government, the comments I got is the process is going really well, they have been really engaged and really interested to get up to speed with things. So, for me that’s an indication that some of this momentum will carry across into the new administration. At the end of the day, let’s not forget that Gustavo Petro wants to invest more in health, he wants to invest more in education, wants to invest more in social opportunities, social equality all of these things cost money and the money has to come from somewhere and a lot of Colombia’s national budget, comes from resource exploration. So, it would seem to be shortsighted for the incoming administration to try to cut off [a revenue source that would] impact its ability to deliver its election promises

Finance Colombia: You know, this topic actually reminded me of something and that is you now have as part of the symposium, an awards ceremony for ESG, for Environmental Social and Governance and I almost forgot and I am glad that we kind of got into this topic because that is something that we want to highlight. Because you and I have both seen, when a mining company or even a petroleum company, when they have an accident or like what happened down there in Brazil with that dam, or when there is some kind of…when companies act bad or there is something wrong, it makes global news, it is all headlines on the other side of the world.

But when companies do things right, I look at the social inclusion, I look at the all women rescue team that went to the Mining Olympics a couple years ago, back I think with Continental (now Zijin Continental), I think about a lot of the different…I have seen things and you have too on the ground where I have seen some mines that go in and make a commitment to purchase goods and services from right there the local community. You know, there is bad news, there is a lot of good news and it is weird because the good news does not make the headlines, maybe my publication, maybe your publication but the broader, mass market publications that is not necessarily so. I think that the award ceremony that is given out at your event is something that is worth mentioning and worth paying attention to, if you could speak briefly on that.

“A very special recognition to the Continental Gold Women’s team, the first of its kind to participate in the National Mine Rescue Olympics and a champion of discipline, courage and bravery”. Silvana Habib Daza, President, The National Mining Agency (ANM).

Paul Harris: Absolutely. You know, I fully agree with you there. Companies generally have their ESG programs; they do various different things depending upon the needs of the local area. They work more from the things that they do with the environment, restoring environments or planting trees, you know that does get attention, the things they do: the women in mining initiative, employing women, training women, that that tends to get some attention as well, but last year we launched the CGS Economic Development Awards because in addition to creating jobs and putting money to social programs, a lot of companies help or leverage their own expertise to help foster the development of local businesses [and entrepreneurship] if you like, in the areas where they operate. They can bring their expertise, they can bring distribution, they could be bringing seed capital, all these things to help local people to develop their own businesses, and not be fully completely dependent on the mining project.

This was very successful, the winning company last year was Royal Road Minerals, and their project is basically like an incubator or venture capital company providing seed capital for local companies to start up and to get going. And it’s been very successful and this was something that I thought it was fantastic, more people need to know about it, other companies perhaps need to replicate this. So, the idea of the award was to give recognition and to show the industry in general that there are many different ways they can be a positive actor and create positive benefits over and beyond having a mining project and creating jobs and generating taxes.

Finance Colombia: Absolutely. I am familiar with Royal Road. They run, a good operation. Now, for those that want to attend or perhaps participate as a sponsor, you always have a great exhibit and the event is attended by a who’s who of investment, operations and politics. You know, I met the Canadian—now the former Canadian ambassador at the event, all types of different dignitaries and things like that. I will put the link in the podcast notes but if you could share with us just what the website or links are, for those that want to contact you?

 Paul Harris: Absolutely. The website is www.colombiagold.co. My e-mail is paul.corresponsal@gmail.com More than happy to talk to anyone about participating, as a delegate, potentially participating on the speaker program or the commercial opportunities that you mentioned.

Over the seven years the event really has grown quite a lot of a momentum, each year which we typically have in the commercial exhibit the Colombian Government, whether it is the National Mining Agency and or the Colombian Geological Survey, they typically have a booth so they can engage and meet people. Last year, the past couple of years we had a delegation from Canada, a trade mission from Canada, this year looks like we are going to have in addition to the Canadians, we are talking, to a Chinese group wants to bring a mission in or a delegation in, and Sweden and also Australia as well. So, we really are going to have a very international focus this year

Finance Colombia: It is always top quality. I have it locked on my calendar every year. It is the most important event, especially when you talk about having a cross section, there are some other events that have got the cranes and the bulldozers and things like that, but this is really an event when you have people who are in operations, people who run ESG, you have mining executives and just as important, with us being Finance Colombia, you have the investment sector, you have people who are in intermediate finance, mezzanine and asset based finance I believe, some of the major private equity companies that focus on mining have been there, whether they are from Canada or as far away as Australia, I always learn something. You have the geologists that do the short course, I need to get in early, every year they’re sold out! I always want to attend that. So, I’m looking forward to it and I appreciate your time and it’s always, it’s great to talk to you and I think I still owe you a lunch so we will get together here soon

Paul Harris: Well I look forward to that. I appreciate the time to talk with you about this Loren. Thank you very much for your help. I look forward to seeing you do. The event is the 8th and 9th of November but I look forward to see you before then.

Co-founder William Shaw lost his mother to breast cancer. Viva’s first breast cancer awareness plane, a first generation A320 model, bore the name of Viva flight attendant Claudia Obando, and was piloted on its inaugural flight by an all-female crew. Executive Chairman and founding investor Declan Ryan lost his father Tony Ryan of RyanAir fame, and brother Cathal, an accomplished Airline Pilot and Captain to cancer, so the battle against the disease is in the airline’s DNA.

Viva uses its charitable arm, the Viva Foundation led by Monica Gil and Tatiana Vásquez to translate the airline’s operational acumen into direct action for social good, promoting equity, inclusion, diversity, and prevention, with initiatives ranging from teen pregnancy to breast cancer prevention.

“Flying differently makes us Viva, and landing with opportunities makes us the Viva Foundation. With the arrival of our new pink plane, we intend to go further, broaden the view of those social aspects that should be a priority for everyone, such as gender equality, inclusion and diversity, without leaving aside breast cancer, which has been our primary banner since 2012,” said Tatiana Vasquez, the Viva Foundation’s executive director.

Viva acknowledges that the airline industry has been male dominated, especially in the cockpit and boardroom, and it seeks to break paradigms by focusing on professionalism, skills, and team building regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation.

“We want to go further, without leaving aside the cause of breast cancer that Viva has led in recent years, we are taking the next step by demonstrating our commitment as a socially responsible airline. This means we believe that we all have the same opportunities to fly higher, united in our differences,” said Viva CEO Felix Antelo. A message that we even highlighted before with our low cost model, the aerial inclusion and democratization of the skies, and that is even stronger today.”

“At Viva we believe that we all have the same professional opportunities and possibilities for growth, development and participation. We fly by and for everyone, and we are as diverse as the places we have flown to.  We welcome (the aircraft) ‘Go Pink’, as a symbol that we chose in order to make these causes visible,” Antelo added.

The initiative so far has delivered 2 tons of books to Cauca, and 3.5 tons to La Guajira

For the Maicao operations, In July 100 boxes of books were delivered to five communities in the Maicao area, with assistance provided by Maicao’s secretariat of education, the secretariat of indigenous affairs, and the town’s Casa de la Cultura (House of Culture, or cultural conservatory). The initiative follows up on Viva’s delivery of 3,502 school supply kits to youth on the impoverished La Guajira peninsula.

Mónica Gil, CEO of the Viva Air Foundation.

On the other side of Colombia, in a rural area southeast of Cali, Viva and Fuerza de las Palabras worked in coordination with the Miranda mayor’s office, the Casa de la Cultura, and the Colombian army to deliver 2,800 books over three days to the rural and indigenous communities in the region.

“Education occupies a very important chapter within the Viva Air Foundation. Therefore, we focus important human and economic efforts to work for the improvement of educational conditions in the country. We are happy to contribute to the training and development of six thousand children and young people of Miranda, with the delivery of about two tons of books to educational institutions in the municipality. We believe in the importance of creating new and better opportunities for our children to build the future they want. We are sure that together with our allies we can achieve permanent change in the populations that need us the most,” said Tatiana Vásquez, the new Executive Director of the Viva Air Foundation.

With regards to the initiative in Maicao, La Guajira, Viva Air Foundation CEO Mónica Gil stated: “At Viva we have the genuine conviction to work for people’s well-being, and education then becomes a fundamental pillar. With the transport and delivery of these 3.5 tons of books, we want to improve educational conditions and, therefore future prospects of a vulnerable population such as the Maicao community. Through these actions we are contributing to the training, capacity development and empowerment of children. The idea is that they find in education the possibility for development.”

Viva and Fuerza de las Palabras worked in coordination with the Miranda mayor’s office, the Casa de la Cultura, and the Colombian army to deliver 2,800 books over three days to the rural and indigenous communities in the region.

Humanos 3D Foundation partners with local institutions like hospital operator San Vicente Fundacion, the University of Antioquia, and Medellín’s tech accelerator, Ruta-N. Just as importantly, the work is made possible financially and logistically by the Viva Air Foundation, Australian Embassy, and the Toucan Spanish School, among others. (If you would like to support the foundation or get involved, click here)

Recently, Viva Air flew the Humanos 3D Foundation team to Colombia’s Caribbean region to fit 25 youth with new, custom themed prosthetics in Valledupar, but they hope to fabricate and donate at least 100 this year. Finance Colombia’s executive editor Loren Moss paid a visit to The Humanos 3D Foundation’s Medellín headquarters to learn more about this innovative nonprofit from founder Adam Armfield (above).

Finance Colombia: So tell us how you first ended up in Medellin.

Adam Armfield: So I’m Australian and I worked in the corporate health industry for many years, in both London and Sydney. I arrived in Colombia about seven years ago. I wanted a break from the corporate world, and so I decided to come to Medellin to take six months off to see what I could do. I didn’t really have any plans so I put the backpack on the back and came over just to explore the city and learn some Spanish, basically, and after six months I decided to stay.

Not long after that, I had to think about a business idea, what I wanted to do. I became very interested in 3D printing, and so I went to New York for a five day conference where I found people who were starting this project of building hands. That’s a great way to learn about 3D printing while I set up the business, and so I came back to Medellin with a 3D printer and I just started making these hands; not for anyone, but just to see if I could do it.

When I made one or two of these, I opened the business up and about six months later, someone from a local science club heard that I had a 3D business and I’d been making these hands, and they had a student within the science club, who went to work with me to learn about 3D printing, but also to deliver one of these hands to a young guy, and so we delivered the hand. From that point on we started to get more people…but I was running the business at the time.

Finance Colombia: What was the business?

Adam Armfield: So the business was just a 3D printing shop. 3D printing services and buying and selling, the consumables and the printers. The business, well it was tough for me, it didn’t do well and it wasn’t going that well, and I had plenty of capacity on the 3D printers, and so we had the students and we also were getting calls on, “I need a new arm.” Well, why don’t we do this on a Thursday night or Saturday mornings? We can just do a part-time sort of social project within the business, and we had spare capacity, and so we started like that.

Then I received a call from someone who heard about our work from England and they said, “well, I want to come and work with you, and I want to volunteer.” (I asked) “I want to know how many days you want to come?” She said “I want to do six months with you.” And I was like I’m not sure if I’m going to be here in six months!”

She came over and said “Look, we want to raise some money for this, you can pay for the materials, you can pay for the space, but as a business you can’t accept donations.” So we actually decided:  There’s a lot more interest and energy around this project. Let’s set it up as its own Not-for-profit.” So back in 2017 we established as an official NGO within Medellin, and now 90% of my work is in the foundation. I still have the business, but it’s online mainly, doing a few signs here and there. So that’s pretty much how we started.. Once you got a little bit of publicity, more people…I mean, we’ve got great projects, we probably have more 3D printers here than many of the universities have in their entire engineering departments, and we’ve got 3D scanners so we opened the doors up to them and it’s just grown. Now we’re doing mobile clinics. This year we’re looking to deliver 120 devices. Last year we did about 60, so yes, it’s growing.

Finance Colombia: Here in Colombia, there are congenital birth defects but there are a lot of people that are victims of the conflict and, you know we have a land mine problem. Why don’t you talk a little bit about the people that you’re helping and how that came to be? The gap that you’re filling here in Colombia?

Adam Armfield: Sure. I guess as many people know, Colombia still has a huge problem with conflict and it has been a historical problem. Initially we were thinking about this project and thinking that would be something which we could tap into and we could help a lot of these people. We have helped several people who’ve been victims of conflict and mines, whether it’s been through standing on landmines. I would say most, a majority of people who stand on the landmine in general lose their legs. We have dealt with cases where people have been armed or disarming mines, so we try to run as a nonpolitical organization, not religious, so we offer help to anyone who needs it and we don’t go too much into their background.

We’ve dealt with soldiers and we’ve dealt with ex combatants. When we did have one soldier who was trying to disarm a mine and he lost both his hands and his sight when it went off in his face, this presents a new challenge for us, because how do you use a prosthetic? You don’t know what you’re picking up. So, we actually had one of the international students come over and worked with the local teams and we made a device which had a motion sensor in it, and then a motion sensor, a distance sensor, like what you’ve got in the back of your car, and so this guy would get a ‘beep beep beep to find what he’s looking for and then double his arm. The family called us about three hours after the delivery and said, please take it off him because he’s walking around the house beeping us crazy!”

And so we went to version two, where we put a vibrating motor in there, so we still had to do the sensor, but instead of beeping, it just vibrates faster when it gets close to the item. That makes sense. So, yes, that was one of the mine victims, victims of conflict, more of the victims of conflict to people who’ve had  their limbs chopped off, so they’ve literally been there when their towns have been attacked and they’ll take off the both or one arm off of a machete and in many cases they’d also cut their throat or hit him in the back of her head to make sure the job’s done. We’ve received a few of those, not a huge amount, but two or three of those cases.

They’ve usually waited 15 or 20 years to receive the help from the government. They tell stories about discrimination when they go into a hospital, they’ll be put in the system and then someone in the administration won’t let them continue because they will say “they’re the rats” or “they don’t deserve help from the rest of us,” etcetera, etcetera, and so they’ll get thrown out of the health system and never get an arm. So we can step in and help people in those lines as well.

Finance Colombia: Obviously there’s direct help that you’re offering to victims of violence or conflict, but another thing that you’re doing that is very interesting is you’re contributing to the open-source community. Tell us about that, because a lot of the design that you’re making, you are also sharing with the world.

Adam Armfield: Sure, everything we do here is open source. Any of the designers, anyone, any of the volunteers who come from the university, we make it very clear that we’re going to copy, share, mutate, improve, do whatever we want to do to the designs, and a lot of designs that we actually work with have come from other communities around the world who are working with similar projects. So not only do we generate our own new designs, but we also hack some of the designs that exist, and then we rerelease those designs to the world. So open source basically means there’s no license on it, they’re completely sharable, and we feel this has a really big impact in what we’re doing.

Anyone can use our designs, and yes, we are using them here in Colombia, but our designs are now being used all over the world, from the United States to England, to Africa. With this type of technology, we’re changing our designs every couple of weeks. Every few months we get some good designs that we use, but we’re always personalizing and changing, and so for a bureaucracy like Colombia, where you have INVIMA (health & medical device and product regulatory agency), but in a design type of environment, you’d need to submit one design and wait two years to get approval, and then you want to change a finger when it is designed, and you’ve got another two years to wait

It’s a long process. It takes up to two years. There’s another company here in Medellin, which has gone down that path using 3D printing too, but they don’t donate the design, they sell them for up to $5,000 for a robotic arm, but we’re friends with them and we’ve worked together, we’ve taught them about the process and for us, it’s just not worth it, there’s a lot of time, a lot of money, a lot of things which inhibit the innovation and the creativity of the team, and so what we prefer to do is rather than go down the sales route, we keep it all open source, and we donate them all as experimental devices. This project hasn’t faced any problems over the last three or four years, they have similar projects in the United States and England, have similar regulatory structures, but as long as we’re not selling them and commercializing them, and we include a disclaimer that these are experimental devices, we’re usually pretty good.

Finance Colombia: You know, I know a company in the States, Sprintray, that is now 3D printing teeth, dentures, or that kind of thing, so I would imagine that you guys here, have having a central office in metro Medellin, but I imagine that long-term, there’s a benefit because the 3D printing technology…Colombia has decent infrastructure where you can get out to the remote areas pretty easily and get into the city if you need to, but I imagine that if I look at other places in the world or areas of conflict or areas where they don’t have the infrastructure that we have here, by using 3D printing technology, you can remotely take this, probably either transport it via air or stick it all in the back of a van and go somewhere and actually do things right there.

Adam Armfield: You sure can, and this has already been done. We’re part of a global network called Enable, a kind of non-centralized global distribution of 3D printers. It could be someone who’s just doing a college project, it could be someone like us, who set up their own not-for-profit, but basically, it’s a support network where we provide designs, and we share knowledge. One of the groups, actually raised money to go to Africa, took a 3D printer and they found an area of high need, and then they went over and taught the local community, with the 3D printer, how to use this technology. They made some (prosthetics) while they’re there. These (printers) weigh about ten to fifteen kilos, and then when they leave Africa, then installed the knowledge remains there.

Finance Colombia: Another thing is that you have an active internship program, and that’s another benefit because you have students here in Colombia, students here in Medellin that are studying things like bioengineering, medical engineering, and those types of fields. I see that you have a lot of students and former students that are getting hands on experience, and then you’ve also mentioned that you’ve had interns come internationally. So why don’t you talk about not just the international ones and the opportunity that they’ve been able to gain, but let’s talk about the local students and, forgive the pun, the hands-on experience they gain.

Adam Armfield: As you mentioned previously, we had a lot of international students just from word of mouth and then they’d come over and help us, anywhere from two weeks to six months. We always had Colombian volunteers as well, but it was always maybe a 50-50 mix. When the pandemic arrived, we lost pretty much all the international students and we had to change our funding methods. We started to expand our programs within the universities, and so now, pretty much everybody who works with us are Colombian. We work with a range of universities here and we offer them internships and volunteer placements, so the internships are six months. The interns are usually in their final semester or final year of bioengineering.

We put them through paces. They have to pass a test because we’re getting a lot of applicants now, and so we will actually (test) them: Do they know basic programming? Have they got  3D printing or 3D design skills? So these guys arrive, they’ve got good skills which contribute to our organization. They’ve learned, but now they can actually put it into practice, so the idea is not only will they work on the current designs and help with distributing and making the hands and the arms to the people who need them now from our list, but we’ll organize one specific project for them each to have while they’re here.

For example, Sara has been doing the development of the fingers and the splints, these new guys here will be working on new versions of robotic arms as well, as some other projects, just quickly (to Sara), tell me about the projects that you’ll be developing this year.

Intern Sara Patiño adjusts a robotically enhanced Batman-themed prosthetic arm

Sara Patiño: We are going to develop a transhumeral prosthesis and our intention is to integrate it specifically to the person who requires it. For example, if the person needs it to practice a sport, how can we help them so that they can practice sport with the prosthesis? For instance, we are going to work with a girl so that mobility can be facilitated with the prosthesis, or a person who is going to drive, we are going to work the same part of the prosthesis so that she can drive comfortably.

Adam Armfield: Thank you very much. So generally, the students will come in, we get hundreds of cases and we have to turn some of them down because they don’t fit into the standard designs, so they’re transfemoral above the elbow, or, they just have a badly mutilated hand, which doesn’t fit into the glove, so we’ve had to turn a lot of these cases away with one look. We only focused on the easy cases, we’re trying to get the low hanging fruit that can serve as many people as possible. But now, because we have this expanded program with the universities, when one of these guys come in, we can say, “look, here’s the caseload, choose some cases which we can help,” and so they’ll do the transfemoral, they’ll do a case here with a little girl who maybe has just a one finger or the robotics, so the idea is not only can we then generate new devices, which all become open source, and we publish those on our website that can be used around the world, but we then have a whole range of designs.

So we won’t have to deny as many people in the future because there’s only a certain number of amputations, of cases that you can have, and we’re also giving these guys an opportunity to apply the design skills, design thinking, and when they leave here, the idea is obviously if they do well here, we’re going to give them a good reference. They’re going to have some good work experience behind them, and they can go out and do this either professionally, in a commercial environment or working in some type of not-for-profit.

Finance Colombia: I would imagine that the costs add up, so how do you meet the funding challenges? There are some people in Colombia that have the means to pay for things, but I imagine a lot of people, especially in rural areas don’t, so you end up I would imagine, donating a lot of the work, if not most or almost all of it. So tell me about the funding model.

Adam Armfield: So, the costs do add up as you mentioned, because not only do we have to pay the normal cost of rent, we do have three employees, the rest are volunteers. We have probably about 15 volunteers, but we have the cost of materials, the cost of the 3D printers, the cost of maintenance, but one of the other costs, which was becoming a little bit unmanageable for us for a while, was the cost of people having to visit us. A lot of these people as you mentioned, live in rural areas. They live on the other side of Colombia. We have people who will travel 15 hours to see us. They would hop on a bus, or two buses traveling from all parts of Colombia to get here, whether from the south, the east, anywhere, for them to come across, they’re paying at least a hundred thousand pesos one way at least, and then they’re having to pay for a night of accommodation here just the come and take the measurements, and they’ve got to do it again in a month’s time to come and pick the prosthetic up.

Now, if that person is a child, you can double that cost because there is a parent that has to come, so now you’re looking at close to 1.5 to double just on their travel expenses. That’s not possible for most families in Colombia. And so all these costs that come up, we were paying for them. 90% or 95% of our money was through the volunteers that came, international volunteers, they would come over and make their own donation, or they’d set up crowdfunding campaigns. Every year we would run two, maybe three crowdfunding campaigns with a new set of volunteers, because if you try to crowd fund as an organization, you’re lucky if you can do that once a year, people don’t do that. But if you get fresh volunteers, fresh networks in, and people who bring their own network of people, and then they donate…so that’s how we were running, but as we started to get more cases in, we had more and more costs coming up that still wasn’t viable.

So that’s when we met with Viva Air and (Executive Chairman) Declan asked “how can we help more people?” Those are the kind of thoughts that he had, and I said, “look, mobile clinics would help us reduce costs, we could go out to them. We could do 20 people in a space of a couple of days, rather than paying 20 people, one or two journeys to come and visit us, you know what I mean?” So we can do these for a tenth of the cost of by going out there.

So to reduce these costs, instead of inviting 20 people a year to come visit us, we can go and see a town…We’ve developed training materials. We had a professional video crew who volunteered their time to develop YouTube videos, and professional documentation that we’ve done, and so we do some online training with, local, medical providers, so we’ll contact the local department and the secretary of health within regions that we think are high conflict or need help now; or they will contact us after they’ve heard about it. We’ll ask them to dedicate one or two members of staff to this project, and it doesn’t have to be a full-time, it could be a couple hours a week, but someone that we can liaise with on the ground. We train them up, how to take the measurements, they send all the official documents, all the measurements and the patient details to us. he team of interns and volunteers will then spend the next couple of weeks making (the devices).

We’re trying to deliver 10 clinics this year. We got thrown down a little bit with the (COVID) travel restrictions, but we’re on track, so the idea is to deliver 10 clinics with 120 arms or devices this year. In the end, the sponsor is the one who invested in us to do it all these mobile clinics.

Finance Colombia: Very impressive. So we touched briefly on Declan Ryan and the Viva Air foundation. So, Viva Air foundation is a major benefactor. So, so if you can touch a little bit on how that happened.

Adam Armfield: Sure. Viva Air has been a huge lifeline. This project was always running sort of month-to-month budget and these guys, when we lost our international volunteers, I thought we were done for! Because to 90% to 95% of our funding came through that. So one of our volunteers was English, it just so happened he was someone who the British embassy needed to take care of, and so I got to become good friends with one of the staff at the embassy. So that staff member helped us here and there throughout the first two years through, and then at the end of 2019 he approached me and said “hey, would you like some corporate sponsors?, I know someone within Viva Air, who could potentially help you,” and so they sent down the head of Viva Air Foundation, Monica Gil. Monica runs the foundation with some of the other ladies and so they came in and we had been applying for grants by this stage for a good year or two sending them away to whatever organization, everyone, and then long processes, you very rarely hear back.

Viva Air Foundation & Humanos 3D Team Up To Provide Custom Prosthetics To Valledupar Youth

But Viva Air came in and said, “how much do you need?” I said, this is what we need to finish the year. Three days later, they said “approved, we’ll have the money you can next week,” so they believe in what we are doing. We are in need of more sponsors still, we’ve recently got a grant from the Swiss government, we’re still in need of further funding to continue to grow and to meet our budgets going forward. So yes, Viva came in, they’ve helped us not only with the financing side of things, but Natalia (from the Viva Air Foundation) is now working with us to—as a volunteer—to design our financial projections, to make sure we’ve got everything in order as far as how much money we need, what what’s our current financial status.

So, you know, being in this organization, we take anyone as volunteers because everyone has something to offer. We’ve had, everyone from advanced electronics designers to ex corporates from Ireland to come in and tell us: “I’ve got no skills, what can I do for this?” Of course you can get painting, everyone’s got a skill they can offer, so not only can the organizations help us financially, but if they have people who want to help us with our systems or with our designs or lift things along those lines, we want to work with them as well.

Finance Colombia: Really cool story. Does the Australian embassy know about you? I think Erika Thompson is the new ambassador.

Adam Armfield: She’s great, she came to visit us. She took over from Sophie Davies. The Australian embassy heard about the work we were doing, and we applied for a direct access funding program back when Sophie was ambassador. So we’ve got about $10,000 or $20,000 from the embassy to help us, which was a great help. That actually helped us upgrade the installations to expand the amount of people we are helping.

I found we worked our guts off for like two or three years scraping and scraping, and then when there was enough momentum behind us, the embassy arrived within about a week or two, and Viva Air arrived, and so we’re going, “this is great!” We got the new ambassador, she said: “I’ve heard about your work. Can I come and visit?” And she goes, “look, we want to continue to support you,” so we just received a little bit more support from the Australian government this year as well.”

So Viva and the Australian government have pretty much brought us through to this point, and we did a crowdfunding campaign at the end of last year. We tried to do one in Colombia this year, but everyone’s tight for money. You know what I mean? To be in this type of situation where unemployment’s high, people are losing their jobs. It’s a little bit tougher to do the crowdfunding, so we’re really relying on the corporate sponsors and, and the government sponsors this year, and who knows what’s going to happen next year? Hopefully we’ll keep on growing in that direction.

You know, we’re doing a great thing here in Colombian society, not only for the people that we’re helping, but from the educational side of things, for offering opportunities to these students. It’s something that doesn’t exist in this area, and so I think if people want to get involved with us, I think that there’s a lot of businesses in Colombia, hopefully that can get involved. Obviously we accept anyone from any country, but if Colombians want to get involved, that would be great because I’m the only gringo here! Before there were more, but this is a Colombian team, and to invest in their own people through education, health, it’s something that would reflect really well within their company. We need more Colombian companies involved, but yes, as I said, we welcome multinationals as well.

Finance Colombia: One of the things that I like is that there are a lot of charities out there that are saying: “give us money” and they show you some picture of some starving kid or something like that, but you are not selling misery, but you are taking these people and giving them prosthetics and things that improve their quality of life, and the story is a positive story rather than a negative story.

Adam Armfield: It’s extremely positive. I mean, these devices, they really change the script of how someone feels about themselves. Yes, they have functionality that people can now pick up a bottle again, people can now use utensils again, or write again or paint again.  One of the stories is a guy who was donated of the (standard prosthetics) from the health system that only had three forks (instead of a hand) and these kids wouldn’t go near him because they saw him as a monster. When he got one of (ours), he came back a couple of weeks later, he was in tears, he said “because all my kids were hugging me again” because it’s like a normal working arm, you know?

So to have that effect on someone’s self-esteem, where his kids were hugging him again, he said “I can’t wait to go fishing again,” you know what I mean?

We have other kids who are arriving at school, they’ve been teased the whole time for not having an arm, not having a hand. Now they go back to school, and they’ve got a an Iron Man or Captain America hand or something like that, and all the kids are like, “wow, this is so cool!” and so the prosthetic or their disability becomes something cool and it really changes the script! We hope that the effect on their self-esteem is going to carry through into their education into their social life and eventually into their later work life. So we’re hoping this and obviously these are very long-term studies, we can’t provide data on that, but it’s obvious withy the smiles on these kids, on their faces, and we’re hoping that it has an impact.

Left to right: Esteban Rojas, Walter Gómez Ospina, Jhon Alexander Sossa Gallego, Melissa Echavarría Guarín, Sara Patiño, Tanya Corredor, Adam Armfield

“I saw a need with this type of work, and I undertook the social project to help some children. After the first deliveries, we received many calls from Colombia and the program grew with the support of students and engineers who joined this initiative,” said Adam Armfield (above, 2nd from right), the charity’s Australian founder.

Last year, Humanos 3D delivered 60 customized prosthetic limbs. This year, they hope to fabricate and donate at least 100. Prosthetics of this type can cost almost $2,000 USD in Colombia, but due to financial and logistical support from benefactors such as the Viva Air Foundation and the Australian Embassy, they provide the devices at no cost to the beneficiary.

“This year we have delivered 70 prostheses. In other words, in the middle of the year we have surpassed the impact we had last year,” added Armfield.

“My daughter is five years old and she was born with a physical deformity in her hand. When she saw the prosthesis, she shouted: “I want my little hand!” When they put it on, she began to play with dice,” said María Sánchez, mother of one of the beneficiaries.

Mónica Gil, CEO of the Viva Air Foundation (Photo courtesy: Viva Air)

Major Colombian brands such as Totto (backpacks and luggage), Nosotras (feminine hygiene) and low-cost airline Viva Air’s nonprofit organization, the Viva Air Foundation have joined forces in coordination with Colombia’s Ministry of Education to deliver and donate 3,502 school supply kits, 500 feminine hygiene kits, and 1,000 backpacks, to youngsters in the Colombian department of La Guajira, within the framework of the Colombian government’s “Teaming Up for Education” strategy.

La Guajira is home to several of Colombia’s most well-known indigenous groups such as the Wayúu, Kogui, and Arhuaco people, still with us today. Breathtakingly beautiful, much of the area is challenged ecologically with an arid, almost desert climate, and socially due to its relatively remote location bordering Venezuela, making it an attractive area for smugglers, brigands, and insurgents. The region has undeniably suffered from a lack of attention or investment from Colombia’s central government, making support from the private sector even more crucial.

The donations were transported on three Viva Air flights that took off from the airline’s main headquarters in the Medellín suburb of Rionegro and from the Colombian capital of Bogotá to the La Guajira capital of Riohacha on April 14, 15 and 16. Slightly more than 4,500 care packages were officially consigned by the Colombian Vice Minister of Education, Constanza Alarcón, and representatives of the Viva Air Foundation to 11 schools in the municipalities of Dibulla, Manaure and Riohacha, with the aim of improving the living conditions of La Guajira youth, and empowering them to continue their educational trajectory.

Kogui youths selling fresh coconut water in Tayrona National Park, Colombia (Photo credit: Loren Moss)

“Being part of this project led by the Ministry of Education fills us with pride, because together we are changing the future of children and adolescents in Colombia. The initiatives of the Viva Air Foundation are focused on the well-being of vulnerable populations and the construction of community spaces for education; and being part of this strategy, we are achieving this objective. At Viva we are teaming up for education together with public and private entities that have the same goal: to guarantee education for those who need it most,” said Mónica Gil, CEO of the Viva Air Foundation.

These deliveries will directly benefit young residents of the municipalities of Dibulla, Manaure and Riohacha, so that they can overcome the challenge of acquiring school supplies in these rural, often isolated areas.

The low-cost airline’s charitable foundation is coordinating efforts based in Medellín and deploying resources to other municipalities in Antioquia, and to other neglected areas of Colombia such as Leticia, in Amazonas and Quibdó, in Chocó. The effort aims to train health personnel, ambulance crews, and hospital support personnel in public and private health centers hardest hit by the Coronavirus COVID-19 Pandemic.

Mónica Gil, CEO of the Viva Air Foundation.

On this humanitarian mission to Leticia, the airline deployed a group of 18 people for training, including doctors, instructors, and nursing assistants. Training efforts included transportation and boarding of critically ill patients in ambulances, biosafety training for the care of infected people, the use of protective equipment and respirator intubation, as well as the management of deceased persons. In addition, personal protection elements and food aid was delivered to the most affected communities.

“Thanks to Viva we arrived in the Amazon to provide support to a place in the country that is difficult to access and at this moment it needs our attention. By coordinating efforts and resources between different institutions, we will be able to strengthen the response capacity of the health sector in this region. Here, we all put, each from his experience, knowledge and purpose to build a country and get ahead of this crisis. We show our solidarity with all indigenous communities and reaching one of the most diverse territories in Colombia, “said Mónica Gil, CEO of the Viva Air Foundation.

“What started as a project to strengthen institutional and hospital capacities to deal with the Covid-19 emergency, is now a reality with its first destination: Amazonas. We join with different institutions, public and private, including Viva Air, to carry out these supports, not only of medical supplies for two hospitals in Leticia and Puerto Nariño, but also real-time training with the latest technology for the treatment of patients and the management of equipment to be donated, ”adds Marcela Ochoa Bernal, executive director of Corporación Antioquia Presente.

Other participants in the humanitarian efforts included BQA Consultoría; Bancolombia; Cooperativa de Hospitales de Antioquia; SENA, Antioquia Society of Anesthesiology; Adventist University – Faculty of Health Sciences, and others.

The airline made two flights, one on April 30, and the second today, taking 9.7 tons from the Food Bank of Cali and an equal amount from the Food Bank of Bogotá to the Almirante Padilla airport in Riohacha. The Talma Airport Services company in Riohacha is assisting, and the delivered food is destined to reach, 2.677 families in Vibulla, Riohacha, Uribia, Manaure, and the frontier town of Maicao on the Venezuelan border.

Mónica Gil, CEO of the Viva Air Foundation.

“Solidarity is one of the flagship values ​​of the Viva Air Foundation. We have been working hard to support those most in need and face this Covid-19 crisis that affects us all. For us it is very valuable to be able to provide our transport services and work hand in hand with different allies to contribute to the society that currently needs humanitarian aid,” says Mónica Gil, CEO of the Viva Air Foundation.

The foundation also announced that it has donated 750 supply kits to health professionals in Colombia and worked with 10 other corporate and nonprofit collaborators to deliver 5,385 tons of food throughout the country, reaching 20,600 people.

“We are happy because as the Food Bank Association of Colombia we have delivered more than eight million kilograms of food throughout the country, exceeding our initial goal of reaching more than one million people. This we are achieving thanks to allies in transportation such as Viva Air, where we are going to be able to mobilize food to the most needy parts of the country and thus increase coverage. Now we want to expand our coverage to one million five hundred thousand Colombians,” said Juan Carlos Buitrago, director of the Network of Food Banks of Colombia.