Last summer, Mine Kafon raised €177,5K in one and a half month with a successful Kickstarter Campaign. The campaign was set up to raise money for the development of a drone that detects and destroys landmines. Since its start in 2012, the Mine Kafon foundation won several different awards, among them the 2016 Future Maker Award at the Global Innovator Conference in Beijing, the Focus Forward filmmaker competition, and the Design Indaba awards in South Africa. Mine Kafon aims to create a global awareness of land mines, and wants to work towards a landmine free world.
A world without landmines
Is it possible to free the world from landmines? Mahmud and Massoud Hassani are working towards this purpose. The Afghan brothers grew up in Kabul, a place that is heavily affected by land mines. After fleeing from war in Afghanistan, they built a new life in the south of the Netherlands. Massoud studied Industrial Design studies at Eindhoven’s Design Academy and designed the first Mine Kafon as part of his graduation project: a relatively easy to make, dandelion-like ball that is moved by the wind. Just throw it in an open field, and if there is a land mine, it will explode. By now, he and his brother own the Mine Kafon foundation, based in Maastricht, where they are developing the Mine Kafon Drone.