ProjectKit

Website prototype

Inspiration:

The epidemic of suicides in Indigenous communities in Northern Ontario. Suicide affects the youth in Indigenous communities more than any other demographic. Suicide occurs roughly 5 to 6 times more often among Indigenous youth than non-Indigenous youth in Canada. (Report: https://www.suicideinfo.ca/resource/indigenous-suicide-prevention/) Link to Guardian story on Inequality: Our Society is Broken, Canada’s First Nations Suicide Epidemic: https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2017/aug/30/our-society-is-broken-what-can-stop-canadas-first-nations-suicide-epidemic

We wanted to give the youth of Indigenous Canada (starting in Northern Ontario) a purpose and meaningful projects they can focus on, rather than harsh realities and idleness and lack of opportunities.

What it does:

ProjectKit is a technological/physical objects that Indigenous youth can receive to enhance their learning throughout summer, when there are less things to do (May-September).

Product Intro:

For this summer, how about building a project that contributes and inspires your local community? ProjectKit is a package with materials and guides for you to kickstart a project based on your ideas. Our team will help you choose a project and assist you throughout the process, with an opportunity to present at our annual Exhibition at an Indigenous community.

How we built it:

We used prototype software Figma to create the prototype of the website. SQLite3 with Python database, we also used Github to house all of our files. As well as extensive secondary research, we even spoke to a fellow hacker about her experiences of volunteering in Indigenous communities in Alberata.

Challenges we ran into:

We began our product with mental health, but we decided based on our idea we decided go with Access to Education. There are definitely crossovers between these two themes, but the product directly relates to education of indigenous youth in the summer months, which is why we picked this category.

Accomplishments:

We built a holistic product that takes both a tangible solution and technology to fit the needs of indigenous communities in Canada, starting from Northern Ontario. We saw ourselves as a startup actually willing to make this projectkit idea.

What we learned:

Time management, teamwork, design skills and back-end skills.

What’s next for Projects:

As mentioned, we see ourselves as a non-profit startup that can actually pilot this project. We also hope to include an Exhibition at the end of the year with volunteers to host an event that can showcase each participant’s projects. We also hope to reach more Indigenous youth (they make up 50% of entire indigenous communities in Northern Ontario, based on our research), 25% in the first year, and 50% of Indigenous youth in Northern Ontario, and finally even reaching adults after gaining majority of youth population.