What is the name of your organization?
Waniskâw Foundation
What is the name of your solution?
Waniskâw
Provide a one-line summary or tagline for your solution.
Waniskâw enables Indigenous youth in their teens and twenties to learn digital art and coding skills online while expressing themselves, sharing work, and collaborating by remixing each other's creations.
In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?
Victoria
In what country is your solution team headquartered?
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What type of organization is your solution team?
Hybrid of for-profit and nonprofit
Film your elevator pitch.
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What specific problem are you solving?
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.
What is your 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.
Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?
Waniskâw serves Indigenous youth aged 15 to 24, focusing on teenagers while maintaining a skill ceiling high enough to engage older post-secondary learners. Retaining experienced youth increases the number of high-quality projects, inspiring younger learners, similar to how Arduino and Raspberry Pi support beginners and advanced users in the same ecosystem.
Waniskâw teaches P5.js, a beginner-friendly version of JavaScript that allows learners to progress from simple experiments to advanced work without switching platforms. Built for the hardest to reach users first, Indigenous youth in rural and fly-in communities with limited internet access, Waniskâw ensures broad accessibility.
By connecting Indigenous youth across vast distances, Waniskâw fosters collaboration and shared creative experiences. As an open-source platform, youth can contribute through coding, design, storytelling, or asset creation, remixing projects and collaborating asynchronously. Waniskâw brings together accessible tools, culturally relevant resources, and a welcoming community, helping youth build confidence, express identity, explore post-secondary pathways, and develop skills for freelance or creative technology careers.
