## How the Public Lab Kits Initiative is Responding to COVID-19 The Public Lab Kits Initiative exists for many reasons but, above all, we exist to serve our community by getting tools into the hands of those who need them. We wanted to take a moment to provide an update on how COVID-19 has affected our operations and what changes you can expect in the near future. As we move through this time of uncertainty, the health and safety of our team is a top priority. As you may have previously seen, our fulfillment was temporarily suspended. Our New Orleans-based staff is working from home, and will continue to do so until we determine that returning to our physical office is in line with public health recommendations. However, we have been able to begin fulfilling some of our kits again. Here’s what you can expect from us: - We will have a limited range of products available. These include: - [Papercraft Spectrometers](https://store.publiclab.org/collections/featured-kits/products/papercraft-spectrometer-intro-kit?variant=6100877213724) - [DIY Infragram Filters](https://store.publiclab.org/collections/featured-kits/products/infragram-diy-filter-pack?variant=1058088684) - [Infragram Pi Cameras](https://store.publiclab.org/collections/recently-added/products/infragram-pi-camera?variant=13775708029037) - [Raspberry Pi Cameras](https://store.publiclab.org/collections/recently-added/products/raspberry-pi-camera?variant=13614976139373) - [Gift Cards](https://store.publiclab.org/search?type=product,article,page&q=gift) - We’re moving to no-contact shipping, which means you’ll see a change in available shipping services. - We will only ship orders out one day per week to encourage physical distancing. While we cannot guarantee shipping dates at this time, you may see a delay of up to five business days between when you place your order and when it ships. - We will continue to ship around the world, where permitted. We will continue to update our community as the situation progresses and we appreciate your support of Public Lab. During this time of physical distancing, we want to invite all Public Lab community members to take part in our virtual community spaces, such as weekly [Open Calls](https://publiclab.org/wiki/open-call) and our live builds coming soon. Follow us on [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/PublicLab) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/intent/follow?original_referer=http%3A%2F%2Fpubliclab.org%2Fhome&region=follow_link&screen_name=PublicLab&tw_p=followbutton&variant=2.0) for the most up-to-date community news and events. For the most up to date information and guidance on the COVID-19 outbreak, https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019. -The Public Lab Kits Team --- Public Lab works to "level the data playing field,” making it possible for people to issue rigorously collected, high-quality, local environmental datasets for use alongside government data for verification and advocacy. We do this by building curriculum, hardware, and software; providing space for research and development; and bringing tools to maturity, making them field ready. **The Kits Initiative is part of this effort.** The Kits Initiative creates, assembles, and distributes kits from the open research designs of the Public Lab community to foster and develop the reach of open, accessible science, by **placing tools in the hands of those that need them**. The main goal of the program is to support the scaling up of development and production of kits to enable thousands more people to produce their own environmental data and continue to shape these technologies. The Kits Initiative helps distribute our community's kits around the world through the Public Lab Store, where revenue directly supports the Public Lab nonprofit: Visit the Public Lab Store site or see Methods on this site Schools, teachers, and institutions can contact kits@publiclab.org for details on reduced shipping costs and bulk orders. **** ## Community Kits Our **Community Kits** program is designed to support the creation of new tools, kits and resources by inviting designers, developers, researchers, tinkerers, community organizers, inventors (and anyone else who is interested) to consider working with the [Public Lab Kits Initiative](https://publiclab.org/wiki/kits) to develop, produce and distribute your open source research tools! Over the next few months we'll be working with a handful of people to source new **affordable, DIY, open source environmental monitoring kits** in our store: expanding resources and opportunities to help people get involved with community science. We have built the infrastructure to help connect environmental research kits to communities who need them, and we'd love to partner with you to help put tools in the hands of even more people. > [Read more about our Community Kits program here](/notes/bronwen/12-06-2017/develop-community-kits-with-public-lab) > Read [what you need to participate here](/notes/bronwen/02-02-2018/community-kits-prerequisites-checklist) Working through the open process allows for helpful feedback, quick design iteration, and sharing of ideas. Additionally, incubating with us provides access to the Public Lab brand, customer base, and production/distribution infrastructure. Public Lab Kits Initiative staff provide necessary support for kit distribution, including promotion of the tool in our online store, organizing payments, and shipping. ## Questions about Community Kits [questions:community-kits] Through our hosting program, we seek to help develop new and novel kits, guides, and curriculum to engage over 10,000 participants in production of their own civic data. In doing so, we seek to add to a growing catalog of innovative tools, with an ever-broadening reach and accessibility. **** ## General Kits Questions About sourcing, troubleshooting, etc! [questions:kits] **** [](https://publiclab.org/system/images/photos/000/022/827/original/IMG_20170610_174338_397.jpg) ## Prototyping kits Prototyping Kits offered by the Public Lab Kits Initiative are in-development kits which we send out for people to help prototype and experiment with, in order to refine and improve. These help support the development of new techniques for monitoring environmental problems. We call these **Prototyping Kits** and they come with a list of challenges and problems to solve. [Read more about Prototyping Kits](/prototyping-kits) **** ## History Since 2012 Public Lab has been developing low cost, open source and user-modifiable kits. By providing low cost accessible kits to the public, we seek to support a growing number of communities in creating a collaborative network of practitioners generating knowledge and data about environmental health. Since 2013 Public Lab kits have been shipped to over 71 different countries and connected thousands of community members. **** ### Contact us The Public Lab Kits Initiative is a part of the [Public Lab Nonprofit](/about) which distributes open hardware kits to support the Public Lab community. The Kits Initiative is based out of Public Lab's Providence, Rhode Island office. To reach the Kits Initiative team, email kits@publiclab.org. For help with orders placed, please email shipping@publiclab.org or call us between 9am and 5pm EST at 503-902-5874 **** ## Kits resources In the spirit of open source, here are a lot of the docs and files we use for the everyday running of the Kits initiative: * [Kits Docs](/wiki/kits-docs) * [Kits Artwork](/wiki/kits-artwork) ...