MAKESENSE

Their core work

MakeSense is a Paris-based civic NGO that mobilizes citizens and communities around social challenges through participatory workshops, grassroots organizing, and bottom-up innovation methodologies. In EU research projects, they contribute expertise in social approaches to security — including prevention of radicalization, juvenile delinquency, and organized crime at the urban level — alongside direct citizen engagement in technology and maker spaces. Their value to consortia is bridging the gap between research outputs and real-world communities: they bring civil society perspectives, hands-on public engagement, and practical knowledge of how security and inclusion challenges play out at street level. They also work on gender equity in technology access, specifically through FabLab and maker ecosystems.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Their first H2020 entry (IcARUS, 2020) placed them in urban security — radicalization prevention, juvenile delinquency, organized crime, and public space management — all approached through social and participatory methods. The second project (shemakes.eu, 2021) pivoted sharply toward social inclusion in technology, specifically the gender gap in FabLab and maker spaces — a domain quite distinct from security. This shift suggests MakeSense's core asset is not a fixed subject-matter specialty but a transferable methodology: bottom-up community mobilization, applied wherever social challenges call for it.

MakeSense is moving from security-focused social innovation toward technology inclusion and maker culture, suggesting future consortia in digital equity, community tech access, or participatory design would align well with their evolving direction.

How they like to work

MakeSense has participated exclusively as a partner — never as project coordinator — across both H2020 projects. They operate in large consortia (29 partners across just 2 projects), suggesting they are comfortable as one of many voices in complex multi-stakeholder settings rather than driving the research agenda. This profile fits an organization whose contribution is a specific, hard-to-replicate civil society access that complements university or institute-led research teams.

With 29 unique partners across 12 countries from only two projects, MakeSense consistently joins large, pan-European consortia rather than bilateral partnerships. Their network is broad but shallow — wide geographic spread without repeated partnerships, which is typical of NGOs brought in for community access and civil society legitimacy.

What sets them apart

MakeSense occupies a rare position among EU research partners: a civic NGO that operationalizes community engagement and citizen mobilization as actual research infrastructure, not just stakeholder consultation. Where most consortium partners bring scientific expertise, they bring direct access to grassroots communities, civil society networks, and ground-level knowledge of how social issues manifest in urban life. For consortia applying under societal challenge calls — security, inclusion, urban resilience — this is a meaningful differentiator: they do not just advise on participation, they deliver it.

Highlights from their portfolio

• IcARUS
  Their largest and longest project (EUR 162,438, running to 2024) addresses urban security through social innovation across radicalization, youth crime, organized crime, and public space — positioning MakeSense as the community engagement anchor in a multi-country security research consortium.
• shemakes.eu
  A focused short-cycle project (2021-2022) bridging the gender gap in FabLab ecosystems, demonstrating that MakeSense can apply its participatory methods to technology access and digital inclusion beyond the security domain.