Waniskâw

Solution Pitch 

The Problem

There are roughly 800,000 Indigenous youth in the US and Canada in their teens and early twenties. These youth have minimal access to educational resources and lack online spaces where they can see themselves being represented and express themselves without fearing hateful interactions.

The Solution

Waniskâw is a free online platform for Indigenous youth in their teens and twenties to learn coding and digital art skills that they can then use to create self-expressive work to share with the rest of the Waniskâw community. All projects created on Waniskâw are open source for other community members to remix for new purposes, helping youth to support each other, collaborate asynchronously and take their projects further than they would have been able to if working alone.

Stats

Over 40 people served by Waniskâw’s workshops

Market Opportunity

Waniskâw serves Indigenous youth aged 13 to 24 in the US and Canada.

Organization Highlights

Collaborating with Animikii

Partnership Goals

Waniskâw seeks:

• Expertise on sharing user-generated intellectual property and payment of developers.
  Expertise to expand bases into the US community.
• Expertise in managing and hiring new talent.
• Expertise in overseeing grant applications and advising on accounting practices.