Reaching Future Indigenous Leaders

Our solution is to create in-person art, college preparation, and leadership workshops for Native American youth led by Indigenous and Non-Indigenous experts. These workshops will use a decolonizing and indigenizing lens that will be recorded, tailored, and shared with educators who work with Indigenous youth on an interactive website.

Native American and Indigenous youth are from some of the most remote places on Earth, making it difficult to obtain access to resources that are more readily available in places like urban areas. On the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, this is no exception. For Oglala Lakota youth who do not have access to art, college preparation, and leadership opportunities, there is little to do after school, and students often turn to drugs, alcohol, gangs, and deal with mental health issues which ultimately lead to suicide.

Our solution is to provide disadvantaged youth in Pine Ridge the opportunity to attend in-person workshops led by Indigenous and Non-Indigenous experts in order to activate their artistic, college preparation, and leadership talents to feel empowered to lead their own projects to address the challenges facing this fast-growing world. We will use curriculum that centers on a decolonizing and an indigenizing lens in order to combat harmful colonial practices that often leave Indigenous youth feeling disempowered and stigmatized. Through culturally relevant pedagogy and artistic practices, students will be able to see themselves in and relate to the content and will feel empowered to organize their own projects.

Pine Ridge is one of seven Lakota reservations that could benefit from these workshops and resources. These workshops will be recorded and the educational resources will be tailored culturally so that they can be shared with other educators that work with Indigenous youth through an interactive website. This will help our project to make an impact for Indigenous youth across the globe. We plan to enrich Indigenous youths’ lives, encouraging them to thrive and become leaders in their community.

The Reservation reports an unemployment rate of over 80%, drop-out rates of up to 70%, and only 1 of every 100 children will graduate from college. Arts, college preparation, and leadership opportunities will be provide an avenue for students to activate their talents and enrich their lives. Additionally, there are little resources currently available for Native American students to see themselves represented in the content of educational curriculum. In nature, these workshops will be decolonizing and indigenizing, meaning youth are seen as the future leaders of their tribe, thus empowering Native students to create their own solutions for their community.

Research conducted by NCELA found that Native American students who have an educational curriculum using Native culture and language, had greater success in postsecondary education. Our theory of change is that if students attend arts, college preparation, and leadership workshops that are centered in their culture and language through a decolonizing and indigenizing lens, then they will be able to succeed and thrive in the 21st century by increasing the number of students who become employed and enroll in advanced degrees.

We estimate that over the course of the pilot of our program, 60 students will be impacted by the in-person workshops, and after our program is scaled to other Lakota reservations, we estimate 500 students will be impacted by our program. Through our partnership with educators, we will be able to grow the impact of our programming to Indigenous youth across the globe. Indigenous youth and educators will primarily benefit from our solution because there are many Indigenous communities who are in need of programming that directly benefits the youth.

Record and survey students participating in workshops - 500 Lakota students will be impacted by the solution

Track views and downloads on website - 5,000 Educators use our online educational resources

Conduct monthly check-ins with students

- 10 students from Pine Ridge will begin to create their own initiatives that impact their community

In traditional U.S. teaching, there is little being done to employ Indigenous teaching or child rearing practices. Our solution reimagines what education can look like for Indigenous youth. Our solution is unique because it there is little being done to define and share decolonizing and indigenizing pedagogy not only within United States’ Indigenous communities but also with Indigenous communities abroad. This solution can be a way for Indigenous communities all over the world to come together through an online platform and to learn from one another’s practices in order to improve the lives of Indigenous youth.

Our technology is human-centered because the mission of the project is to improve the lives of Indigenous youth and they will be at the center of every stage of growth for this project. Our solution involves working directly with Indigenous youth to encourage youth to activate their talents. Additionally our solution involves working directly with educators to make our educational resources impactful and build bridges between communities.

People will access our solution through an interactive website. This website will not cost anything for educators, however, if educators do not have access to the internet we can use the mentorship from Solve to transfer resources in an innovative way.

Our team is a 501c3 nonprofit organization and will be able to sustain our leadership team as we research our program. In our pilot, growth, and scale phases, we have a fundraising goal to increase our budget by $200,000 through grant applications, fundraising events, and reaching out to our individual donors, however we will need more support in order to grow our team and make sure there is overhead to support this program and other programs that our team conducts. Our annual budget including this program will be $320,000, allowing $100,000 for the implementation of this program.

Factors that may limit our ability to succeed are that our team is very small, with a modest budget, which may make it difficult to carry out this program and our other programs. Additionally, it may be difficult to grow our partnership with organizations abroad, as we will spend the majority of time scaling this program in the U.S. and Canada.

http://lakotachildren.org

http://facebook.com/lakotachildren

http://twitter.com/lakota_children

I am applying to solve because I want to be a part of a community that works to solve the biggest challenges facing our communities and the world. I believe that this network’s innovative style will help us to address crucial issues facing Indigenous youth. As a solver, I hope to become connected to people who approach this work in the same optimistic nature with humans at the center of our work. I believe we need the mentorship and partnership opportunities in order to make our solution happen and Solve is the best avenue to achieve it.

We are partnered with 11 schools on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. We are the lead sponsor of the TEDxYouth@DinosaurPark, an independently organized TED event which brings Native and non-Native youth together to share ideas on a national platform. More can be found here.

N/A we do not have competitors as far as we know.