 Care in New York City, the black maternal mortality rate is up to 12 times that of white women. 12 times. The statistics are staggering. Disparity in care is costing black women their lives. Centuries of poverty and marginalization among indigenous people. When I saw how so many indigenous youths like me get left behind, I was like, this is not fair. For me, the answer was robots. There are 18.4 million children not getting ASIC vaccinations because of the challenges of the last mile transportation. I was shocked and then I thought there must be a way to solve it. A mission to eradicate racism and bias for maternity and infant care. I want to give students robots who wouldn't have them otherwise. It's a lot. The goal is to create a reliable calling device to deliver these life-saving vaccines to the people who need them. Even though I know this is the right thing to do, it's just bloody difficult. Welcome everyone. My name is Sarah Montabaro. I am the director of strategic partnerships at MIT Solve. What you just saw was the trailer to Solve's documentary series, The Big Idea, which follows three innovators over the course of a year as they pursue, against all odds, making their ideas a reality. We are lucky enough to be able to feature one episode from the series today and be joined by the film star, Danielle Boyer, who is the founder and CEO of Steam Connection and will be joining us for a panel discussion and Q&A alongside Nicole Johnny from Raven Capital Partners. But before we dive into the film, I want to spend just a few moments introducing the SoCAP community to Solve for those of you who may not be familiar with us. Solve is an initiative of MIT with a mission to drive innovation to solve global challenges. Through our open innovation challenge approach, we find and select the most promising solutions from across the world and connect them to MIT's ecosystem and community of supporters to help drive their impact and growth. We have run over 75 open innovation challenges to date and have received over 18,000 applications from nearly every country across the globe. And once we select those innovators, connect them to a nine-month wraparound capacity building support program, as well as our community and MIT ecosystem to help them scale and grow. And what these numbers really tell me is just how many people are out there in the world trying their hardest to create the future that they want to see. Now I know that I'm likely preaching to the converted here when I say that we need innovation in order to address some of the world's most pressing challenges. At Solve, we focus on five areas of impact that we believe need more innovation, whether it's addressing climate change, poverty, broken health care and education systems or systemic racism. We believe that we need new ideas and even more so, we need new voices. So I want to talk a little bit about who these innovators are and talk a little bit about the work that they do. Our innovators, we have nearly 300 in our portfolio who are affecting over 170 million lives around the world. And what that means tangibly is that's a child who now has access to better learning tools. That's a mother receiving better maternal health care services. That's better air we breathe. That's the water we drink. Truly that means fewer lives, fewer people who are dying from reasons that we can prevent. And these solvers are not necessarily MIT students. These are, and in fact some of them have never even been on a college campus before, but these are folks who saw a problem in their communities and are doing something about it. Over the last seven years, SOLVE has worked with our community of supporters to facilitate over $65 million in funding to our innovators. We work with a variety of philanthropic and corporate partners to ensure that every team that's selected through our program receives prize funding in the form of unrestricted grants. They receive leadership coaching and wraparound services and bespoke and tailored partnership introductions to a global community of social impact resource providers. What we have seen to date is that there's also been a need for further investment capital to help support teams that are on the brink of growth. We have also developed our own philanthropic venture fund called SOLVE Innovation Future, or CIF, which is organized as a donor advice fund and has been created to help with philanthropic support to make catalytic direct investments into our for-profit solver teams at the SEED and Series A levels. To date, we have made 17 investments in our for-profit teams through debt equity and alternative investments and have remained vigilant in ensuring that the entrepreneur's growth strategy remains at the center of our investments. We want to ensure that all of our investments are founder-friendly, are in using flexible capital wherever possible. And we also use the proceeds of the fund and the proceeds that come from our investments to reinvest in future solver teams to create a pay-it-forward and evergreen mechanism. And the statistic that we're most proud of is this one here that for every dollar that we've invested, we've helped to unlock four dollars towards our investees through our participation. Now, there's so much I could tell you about our solver teams and the amazing work that they're doing and the impact that they're having on the world, but there's really no better way to tell their stories than to show you. So I'm delighted to present the Indigenous Robots episode of our series, The Big Idea, and I invite you to stick with us for a Q&A and panel discussion that follows. And after the session, I also invite you all to join myself and my colleague Francis, who's in the back of the room over there, and to chat about ways that we can support innovators and their stories like the one you're about to see. So with that, I present The Big Idea. We live in a world run by technology. It shapes how we live, move, and learn. But technology creates a divide, and when you're on the wrong side of that, you get left behind. Tech has increased the gap between the haves and the have-nots. Access to technology is key. This is our number one issue, closing the digital divide. Right now in the United States, Indigenous people like me are far less likely to own a computer or have high-speed internet access than any other ethnic group. So I decided that instead of being left out of the tech world, we should be the ones building it. So I'm Mojibwe from the Sioux St. Marie band in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. It's always been a part of who I am. I've always been very interested in how things work. I remember when I was younger, I would take a lot of appliances apart, like how do these things go together? Definitely a little too nosy sometimes, too. When I got to high school, I had a lot of learning challenges, and so I really struggled with math. I always convinced myself I couldn't do it until I stumbled upon a robotics team. I found myself learning everything from design to electrical engineering to computer science, and then on top of that, it's so cool. But I was kind of met face-to-face with this robotics kit, a cost of $500, and that is a lot of money. My family struggled to afford robots, and when I saw how so many kids who had a lot of funding get so many opportunities, I was like, this is not fair. The gears like started turning in my head. I started experimenting and teaching myself things. Testing things, getting new parts. And after I graduated, I invented my first robot. His name is Ekker. Every kid gets a robot. It's made out of recycled plastic. It's got little hexagon wheels, and kids are able to assemble, wire, and program the robot for like less than $20. So the first thing we're going to do is we're going to grab our motors, and we're going to line it up with our chassis like this. See, oh, it looks so cute. And so what happens is when we put this on a battery, see, it spins. Oh, that's cool. That is cool. Who wants to test it out? I started a nonprofit called the Steam Connection, teaching classes, starting robotics teams. Oh, so like it's all metal, so it connects. Yeah, it's conductive. There's metal in here. And you can make them spin. You can make them go forward. You can make them go backward. Kids are as excited as I am about the robots. How do we send things to the brain? You are going to code them at home. Here, I'm going to show you how. But as I continued to work with kids and teach more classes, I realized that the greatest need for these robots was within my own community. I often feel like I exist within two different worlds. I live in so-called America, but I'm not American. I don't see myself that way. Being Ojibwe is who I am. But often I feel like I have to be something else to exist in the world. Things like our language were criminalized up until recently. Now let's pick up with the English ones. I'm a pony, grandfather. That's better. Happy birthday. My fear is that our future will not include our culture and our voice. And so this year, I'm creating a robot for Indigenous youths. And the goal is to have the robots speak to students in their languages. Good morning, ACES conference attendees. Give yourselves a big round of applause for being here. Look around this room. It is because of you and the desire you have that can help our people to survive and continue to be resilient. Okay, what's your last name? Boye, B-O-Y-E-R. So the ACES conference is a tech conference for Indigenous peoples. I'm actually here right now to launch a new robot called Scobots. This right here is a speaker. It's magnetic and this is actually what's inside of the robot. I've been working on it for a while with volunteers to my organization. Yeah, sandwich iron on one side, solder on the other. We were up late programming and getting everything assembled and put together. Yeah, I got like no sleep last night. The goal is to get the support that we need to be able to bring robots to more kids. Oh my gosh, it's so nice to meet you. Hey, what is that fear? It's a language learning robot. It teaches kids Indigenous languages. Wow, that is so cool. And I match it. We have a Taino one, a Navajo one, and then this one's Ojibwe. Oh my gosh, so cool. You're the one that makes the robot. Yeah. So what does it do? It's a language learning robot. What? Yeah, it's for Indigenous languages. We had such a great response from people. They were taking pictures of it. All right, I'll do the thing. Asking questions about it. How does it work? See, it goes, it's like that. See? I would love to connect with you and so we can connect now. Oh, thank you. I really appreciate it. We have so many people now from ACES who want robots for their schools and classrooms. I was like, oh my gosh, we got to make even more happen. So since the ACES conference, we have gotten so many requests from Indigenous educators and schools to send the robots to their classroom. And that is really awesome, but we absolutely cannot meet them right now. I mean, I make all the robots here and pretty much make them myself. And so I'm always working. I work every single day, over 15 hours a day on the steam connection and on the robots. And there's only so many that we can make right now. I sometimes just fall over and fall asleep wherever I'm at. It is definitely a lot. I've always felt very intimidated by the business process. Things like marketing and social media, business planning and finances. I don't know really how to do all of this. And so finally I was like, Danielle, you cannot do everything alone. You're going to need help. One of my team members encouraged me to apply for MIT Solve for the Indigenous Communities Fellowship. I was fully expecting to not make it any farther. And then I did. So what is your big dream and for every kid gets a robot, the future of it? My biggest dream is for every Native kid to have a robot. And yeah, it's a big dream, a big goal, an expensive goal, but that is where I'm going towards. Solve is an initiative based out of MIT to support entrepreneurs around the world who are doing amazing work buying for their communities. We had over 1,500 applications and we wound up having 35 solvers. I'm so curious. What does Indigenous robotics mean to you? Well, I think it could look like many different things. I'm a member of the Navajo Nation and I work to support our Indigenous entrepreneurs and innovators. All right, let's come in. Perfect. This is like my workstation right here. I have things like breadboards who work on the circuits and I have a bunch of robot wheels here. Awesome. So with Danielle, she's incredibly passionate. She just loves what she does. So that's my chaotic thinking brain right there. But for Native peoples here in the U.S., it's not just about passion. We really need entrepreneurs who are able to support our communities. And I soldered out the base of the chassis and stuck the electronics in it. I think that for Danielle, she has eight different ideas for really amazing robots. But at the end of the day, it's about, okay, how do we make this scale? And how do I raise capital? And so that's one thing that I really think Solve will be able to help support her with. So I'm here for the MIT Solve event. Thank you. I'm trying to recruit more funding to be able to expand our manufacturing so I can build more robots for the schools and classrooms. I don't do a lot of formal pitches, so I'm just totally nervous. All right. Aneen, hello. My name is Danielle Boyer. My goal is to get a robot into every Indigenous youth's hands. And so what are your biggest needs or goals that you could use, advice or support on, whether it be capital or other types of capacity-building support? Yeah. So we're kind of at a turning point. A lot of it is down to funding to be able to invest not only in the manufacturing of ECUR, but also the expansion of the SCOBOX. And so, yeah. Right now we're looking for about $150,000. That's what we're looking for. That doesn't sound like a whole lot of money. We can offer some financial assistance. That would be awesome. And get the word out. That's awesome. Thank you. And then I work for General Motors and I need all of our STEM education grant making efforts. I know that if we were to connect with our volunteer employee engagement team, that we would be able to at least share out some opportunities. Funding is one of the most important challenges. And so to be able to have people say to you, this can happen, that's a huge relief. So what does it look like when you have something that has always been in your hands that is now going to be in other people's hands? Do you have to rely on others? I am ready. So I have one, two, three, four, five, six that need to go to one classroom. So we're going to put six in here. So because of the funding I've been able to get, I've been able to make more robots than ever before. Whichever fits best. Usually I do it with this pointing up to their space. So recently I had this amazing tribal school in LA. Reach out to me. They were like, hey, we need robots. Come quick. I had no idea that they even knew about what I was doing. So I was just blown away that they wanted me to come. I ended up making the most robots I've ever made in my entire life. We had over 120 robot kits on the floor of my workshop. I was so excited because bringing robots for Indigenous students has always been my biggest goal. So this is the only public Indigenous school in all of Los Angeles. You know, the majority of our students come from struggling families. We're talking about 85-90% meet the poverty levels. And the reality of the day-to-day is a struggle because our parents can't afford Wi-Fi. They can't afford a computer. On top of that, for Indigenous children, if you want to get into math, science, engineering, you simply don't identify in all these fields. Less than 20% are women. And out of that, how many are Native American Indigenous? Very few. Our youth could not see themselves as those professionals. And to us, that was a huge problem. Okay. Hi, everyone. Good morning. How many of you have built the robot before? All right. So let's dump everything out on the table. So the first thing we're going to do is we're going to put our motors onto our chassis. And we can control the direction of the robot based on which color we use on the battery. The coolest part is to see her explain the robots and show all the different equipment. Then they're just like, wow, that makes robotics and STEM seem so much more accessible. So you'll just put three rubber bands on each wheel. And can someone tell me why I would add rubber bands onto a robot wheel? Yes, traction. For art students, never had they ever had an opportunity to make a robot to hold the pieces. So not only are they learning how to solve the issue of you got all these parts, what do you do with them? Danielle also says, look, I've had all these barriers. I'm just like you, but here I am. Look at what we can do together. All right. Three, two, one. They're a bunch of geniuses. Oh my goodness. Being able to see the students have all the robots working was the best feeling in the entire world. Children need to belong. They need to feel that their culture is important. So being able to access role models like Danielle, it's extremely valuable. So have any of you soldered before? All right, let's try it. So with Danielle, I see her make her way into STEM on her own accord, doing what she wants to do and using her own cultural beliefs. I see her as someone that I can look up to and someone I might want to become in the future. But also such a big inspiration for my community especially with like the Scobots and language revitalization. And then next is Notoka. And that means my name is, and say your name. Scobot. I feel like this one would go too, because it's a black one. Oh yeah. You know, I think our knowledge is often dismissed. We're not seen as what we know is valid. But I think science and technology is what my people are and is what we know. And so technology should be made by us for us. That's how ears work, huh? If you can extend your hands like that. Thank you. Danielle, we're so honored by your visit today. You represent hope to our community. You represent the best of our community. You represent all that we can do. Thank you. Make a wish. Thank you. People have this idea that indigenous peoples exist just in the past, but we're still here now. And to be here, seeing the work that they're doing brings me so much hope and joy for the future. You know, our people have been inventors for thousands and thousands and thousands of years before colonization that was taken from us and we're reclaiming that. And you never know what the future is going to look like. A big round for Danielle. We're going to get our chairs set up here in a minute up on stage. And I just want to take one minute to applaud Danielle. First of all, this was filmed about three years ago. When you were how old, Danielle? Still 19 years old. And there are many stories, I think, that inspire us today. And it's oftentimes in a world like this where, and those of us that are working kind of at the intersection of tech and impact that you feel the pendulum swinging between pessimism and optimism. And on days that I'm feeling particularly helpless or feel like I need a dose of optimism, I turn to Danielle's story and others like her. So I just want to thank her so much. I'm going to go ahead and welcome to this stage the star of the show, Danielle Boyer, founder and CEO of the Steam Connection, and Nicole Johnny, investment associate at Raven Indigenous Capital Partners. Welcome. Thank you so much for being here. I think you guys are over here. So we wanted to spend a little bit of time, of course, talking about the film and talking about your experience, Danielle. But I also want to make sure because we spent, folks were able to kind of get to know you in the film that we also introduce you, Nicole, and for you to tell us a little bit about your work and what you do at Raven. Maybe you could just introduce us to you, your background and the work that you do. Absolutely. So in traditional Navajo format, my name is Nicole Johnny, and I'm born to the Towering House clan, born for the Blackstreet Wood people. My maternal grandparents are the Wetter's Edge clan, and my paternal grandparents are the Teua Bear people. I grew up in the community on the Navajo Nation called Where the Clear Water Runs, but we call that Crystal New Mexico now. But I currently live and work in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on Teua land of our Pueblo neighbors. And so, yeah, that's a little bit of who I am. Fantastic. And Danielle, obviously we got to know so much about your journey and what inspired you to start the Steam Connection. But we would love to hear just a little bit more about your entrepreneurial journey and some of the sort of peaks and pitfalls that have happened to you in the last few years. Yeah, so, Bonjour, hello. My name is Danielle. I realize I don't know that, but I'm Ojibwe from the Sioux tribe, which is in the upper peninsula of Michigan. I'm currently living in San Diego, so not that far from here. I am so happy to be in California. It's like lovely. It's so nice. It's like warm and all. I like it. Anyways, yeah, I got started in my work when I was 10 years old, actually. My little sister, Brie, was really interested in science and tech resources, but we couldn't afford the robots and stuff like that. And I started teaching at that age, albeit quite poorly. You're 10. When I got a little bit older, I joined a robotics team and I got bullied really badly. I was one of the only girls. And I had a lot of things happen, like stalking and harassment and stuff like that. And it doesn't say a lot of that here, but that is one of the main reasons why I started the work that I did is because my experiences are not one that I experience alone. You know, I now travel to tribal schools like every single week, bringing robotics kits and youth programming. And it's the best part of my job. And I always feel a bit discouraged when I hear that my students have experienced the same things that I have. Like I at one point was getting stalked with drones by the boys on the robotics team and they would like spy through my window at night and like take pictures of me. And I learned that that is happening to other native girls in other schools. And so to me, it's so important that we have safe spaces and that we have spaces to advocate for ourselves and to learn in peace and in a happy way. And so it definitely has been a huge journey from that main goal and that main vision to now manufacturing and designing a lot of different robots. Now at this point, I've sent out over 11,000 free Ecker kits, which is really exciting. It makes me so happy. We have over 34,000 educators on our learning platform also making robots. One of my students just became a solver three weeks ago for an app that she came up with. That's so cool. And so I think from those negative experiences and things like that, a lot of positivity has come out of it. And we've been able to reach so many youths and it's a really, really beautiful thing. It's fantastic. It's such inspiring work that you're doing. And Nicole, I imagine that you are working with similar innovators to Danielle. And I'm curious how you go about finding and selecting and choosing to support particular indigenous led innovations and kind of what you're looking for when you're making your investments at Raven. Absolutely. So with Raven, we're super excited and always so passionate about supporting our indigenous entrepreneurs. It's a huge facet to what we believe in what makes a vibrant economy. It is with indigenous people. Lately, I've been kind of looking back upon in the Southwest, we have the different ruins like Chaco Canyon. We start learning about the different trade and the commerce that had been there. You start understanding that indigenous excellence, indigenous knowledge has always been there of us tracking the stars, of knowing the seasons, of inventing things, of solving issues. And so at Raven, we really believe in that. And so what we really look for on the Raven team as well is we look for passion. We look for commitment and we look for partnership. We look for passion because part of our screening of what we do at Raven is the impact screen. And that's pretty unique. A lot of the indigenous entrepreneurs that go through our system, they tell us and their feedback of like, I've never had the opportunity to talk to a VC fund about why we do what we do. Because often or not, the entrepreneurs that we work with, they have faced a hurdle. Like Danielle, access to robots. A lot of our indigenous entrepreneurs have faced several hurdles or a hurdle and they're trying to figure out and build a business that solves it. So we want to see the passion. We want to see what drives them to do the work of what they're doing and what they're building. But we also look for commitment. And we're not just talking about commitment to the business or the teams that you're building and then that they're committed to. But we're also looking to the commitment of advancing indigenous people and our livelihoods at that. That's the commitment we're looking for. That we're looking for the commitment in the business to better the communities around us. But we're also looking at partnership. And partnership is looking at what do we bring to the table to our entrepreneurs because in Navajo, our concept of relationship, of how we relate to one another, we want to be good relatives. And so how can be a good relative to our entrepreneurs? And so that's really the crux of what we're looking for, what we think about it and how we want to bring ourselves to the table to our entrepreneurs. That's fantastic. And I think it's so clear that their approach is so value aligned and kind of value-focused and it's really exciting. So Danielle, I know that in the film we saw the focus on preserving indigenous languages and the work you do and the incredible story when you were at the school in Los Angeles. I'm curious if you can kind of tell us a little bit more on what's next. As you look to the future for the STEAM connection, how are you looking to the future while still kind of holding true to knowledge of the past? Yeah, thank you. My main goal when working with students and creating STEM solutions is to help the students become future innovators, to give them the skills that they might not have otherwise. So it ranges from coding to building your own website, to learning how to assemble and wire things, learning 3D printing, CAD skills, all that stuff, kind of doing it all in a way that is project-based, easy to understand and accessible and simple, right? And that is the main goal through my organization. And that looks like many different forms. And one of those forms is through the form of a language revitalization robot named the SCOBOT. And SCO means let's go in res-like. And so it's like a cute little kitty cat robot and I was able to design it with my students. And it's something that's very important to me because my language, Ojibwe Mohan, is actually an endangered language as are many indigenous languages. And it's a very scary thing to know that there are limited resources, that there are limited information out about there, about our languages. It feels very like you're stuck sometimes because there's so many problems in our communities, whether it be access to clean water, to the internet, to language resources, all those things. I see robots as an opportunity to help to begin to solve some of these problems and to offer our youth opportunities to help us solve these problems in the future. So yeah, what that has looked like for now is manufacturing a lot of robots. And it's been really, really exciting. We've been able to branch into AI and AR and incorporate a lot of upcoming technologies into the robots. And it's really, really cool. And if anyone wants to see some videos of the robots afterward, I have more. I have some wearing tutus and unicorn ones. They're cute. Well, Nicole, I also know that at Raven, you're kind of looking at trends across the indigenous investment space too. I'm curious what you see as some of the opportunities for the investment community to be doing more in terms of investing in indigenous led solutions and what's kind of the call to action for the folks in the group in the room here today? Absolutely. So two weeks ago, I was back here in San Francisco with the Native Women Lead Inaugural Growth Capital Summit. And there I heard a most ridiculous statistic. I heard there that 0.004 percent. Now, I don't know if you guys realize how small of a number that is, but 0.004 percent of venture capital funds actually make their way to indigenous entrepreneurs. That is unacceptable on every accord. And what we do at Raven is that we try to bring this access to capital. We try to, because we understand the hurdles there. And if you ask yourself, why is it only 0.004 percent? Part of it comes down to indigenous representation. And it's about indigenous representation at the levels that make the power, the decisions of how capital can go to our entrepreneurs. Because ask yourselves, how many indigenous led VC funds do you guys know? How many indigenous fund managers do you know? At that, how many indigenous people in finance in general do you know? We're not here, but we are doing our best to be here. You know, for myself, what I really loved in the video was that I never saw myself in finance. I have two degrees in finance and investment banking background, but when I graduated high school from a border town in New Mexico, I had no idea what the finance world is. I had no idea you could get a degree in finance, but now I have two of them. Those are the hurdles. Those are the hurdles that we have to face to even get to this space. And so the call to action really is of what I think when we're here talking about impact, talking about change, talking about why we should care about these things. It's because when you center and you can uplift people, people that have a systemically been left out, you find more results. You find better ways to think about the world and different issues and solving those issues at large. So I'd say really fund scholarship opportunities for Indigenous youth. The hurdles that we face are massive to even get to the space that we're even at right now. So if you have the opportunities, fund. Fund the scholarship opportunities that you can. Fund the entities that are doing the work, that are rooted in their communities, that have people and our communities at heart. Fund that and trust us when you fund that. Be an ally. Help us create the spaces so that we can be here in representation, so that we can tell our stories. Because there are over 500 and what is it? 74 federally recognized tribes. We only represent a handful of them here on the stage. So when you're talking about the Indigenous narrative and the voice here, know that there are over 500 voices that need to be heard. So help us make the spaces so that we can be here because we can't do this work alone and we need you guys as allies. Thank you, Nicole. And I invite everyone to spend some time after the session meeting with Raven, some of her other colleagues. Meeting with the Raven team, meeting with Nicole, some of her colleagues that are here across SOCAP today and tomorrow because this work is important and we must do it together. So we're going to open it up for Q&A with the audience. But before we do to kind of lead into that conversation, probably the first question that we'll hear is Danielle, what other support do you need now? What are you looking for as we move into the future for STEAM Connection? For me, one of my biggest goals is to get a robot into the hand of every single Indigenous youth. And to look at that, it takes a lot of funding. We have a lot of great supporters, but we give every single resource away for free. And we also have youth cohorts where we compensate our students to learn advanced technology to help us develop our programs. So to bring 500 robots to a school, it looks about $10,000, which honestly is not a lot of money when all the kids get to take those resources home, they get to keep them, and it impacts them so much. If you're curious to learn more, my website is www.steamconnection.org. And we have a lot of really great information on what the students are doing now with the skills that they've learned through robotics. And if any of you are interested in STEM education or supporting any of those initiatives, definitely let's have a chat. Fantastic. Well, my colleague Francis has a mic, and we'll take a few questions from the audience. One in the back. Hi, I just wanted to first say that what you guys are doing is pretty inspirational. My question is, how do you guys deal with infrastructure issues when it comes to technology? I can answer that. There are a lot of infrastructural tech issues, especially regarding Indigenous communities and things like access to the internet. A lot of the schools that we go into, there aren't enough laptops, they don't have computer mice, they don't have always all the resources we need to be able to start the programs. But they really, really want them. And so one thing that I do is when I'm designing robots is all the robots are designed to be able to operate without access to the internet, which is really awesome. We also make all of our resources out of recycled packaging, recycled stuff, so that we're able to get them into the community's hands faster and more sustainably. And the other thing is that we work with a lot of partners who don't always have funding for us, but sometimes they'll just give us a box of computer mice, which I got last week. I was really happy about it. And now we're able to teach a CAD class to an entire group of students. There are a lot of issues, a lot of infrastructural issues, and ones that I cannot necessarily always solve on my own. But there are ones that I can circumvent and help the students access the opportunities now. But there is a lot of progress to be made, especially when it comes to bringing internet to our communities. Anything you want to add, Nicole? The infrastructure on that is definitely very true. And I think that's really unique as well when you're talking about meeting the needs of Indigenous community, whether that's on reservation or off reservation. So those are sometimes two very unique conversation points that you can have. But definitely the connection, the connectivity, I think the pandemic had really highlighted the disparity of the access to internet, to basic resources as well too. So we've got a lot of work ahead of us to do and we're all trying to chip away at it in some way or form. Next question. Hi, I'm Benjamin Castaneda from Peru. So I have a question and an invitation. What you're doing is very inspirational and I think it's very applicable, of course, to Peru. Could you like to go international? That's my question. And the invitation is, as we speak, we are running an event in Peru about STEM which is funded by the U.S. Embassy in Peru. And would you like to come to Peru to speak to everyone? I would love to. I recently just did an article with BBC and they were interviewing robotics teachers in Peru and it is a cool piece that's coming out soon. And I was like, I have to visit. The teachers here are like amazing. They are really putting the work in and I have to say I admire it a lot. So, yes, I'd love to. Hi, I actually have a similar question but it's a little bit different. So my name is Jennifer Ma and I'm from Hawaii. I am a native Hawaiian woman and actually Hawaiians are not federally recognized indigenous people. What I found super powerful about your story is that there's STEM but there's identity. That was tied to it and that was really, really powerful. So we are actually opening what might be one of the largest indigenous youth centers in Hawaii. Yes, and STEM is going to be a huge part of that. What advice would you give for, I guess, starting it? Like, so for you, you're going around teaching. How do you build up in young people to become the teachers or to even start this, whatever advice that you might have? Honestly, I start with the teachers and working on a needs assessment with them. What do the students already know? What are they looking for? It's a very customized thing that I do based on the communities that I work with. I go around to many different indigenous communities across Turtle Island and every single community is so, so different and has so many different needs. So I can't always give blanket advice because sometimes I'll have a school come to me and they're like, we just want math help. We just want to start a math center. We need help with this. Other times, I have communities come to me and they're like, we want to start a 3D printing program. We need help with that. And so a lot of what I do is I speak one-on-one with the educators and helping supply those needs. The biggest thing that I do is I train the teachers to use the solutions, whether it be my own or even other technical solutions on their own so that their centers or classrooms can run independently. So that is like, I would say the biggest part of what I'm up to day-to-day is working with the teachers. So if you have specific questions on what kind of needs there are, things like that, I would be happy to help. I can help from everything. I've been asked what kind of 3D printer should we get to what kind of computers do we need to be able to run this. I have a really great team of engineers and people who are very hands-on with this and who are so supportive and down to help. So yeah, feel free to reach out. Hi, my name is Yilana, I'm a young Oak Tree. And first, just super congratulations to the trifecta of the three of you collaborating in these ways, just modeling how to go forward. Questions related to the most recent, have you created a curriculum guidebook that would allow teachers to one, if you want to do them one by one, they're all short questions? Yes, I have a virtual learning platform called the Make a Robot platform. We have 34,000 educators on it and we have a great curriculum. And we're, we have an app soon that's coming out, so I'm excited. Fantastic. Related to the approval and invite, have you guys been invited to or thinking about applying for a Clinton Global Initiative? This tend to be around the $10 million market. We have been in touch with the team about potentially presenting there, but it's definitely something we'd like to be featuring, Danielle's story, the other episodes from the film to be able to share to more audiences. So if anybody in the room has opportunities that we want to discuss, happy to have that conversation. Great. I'm actually one of their previous students and like the support that they offer is amazing. I also went on after that to do one of their programs with VentureWell. It's called the Verizon Forward for Good Challenge and we ended up winning that with BioDegratable Robots and it was really exciting. I think that was about when we started filming this and it was just honestly the support that the Clinton Global Initiative has is really awesome. And related, had the pleasure of starting George Lucas's Educational Foundation in 1991 and if you haven't already been profiled on a Jitopia, it's still the most widely used online video magazine in K-12 education. We can get you straight in there. That would be cool. Okay. Any other questions? All right. Last pieces of advice for Indigenous innovators out there who feel like they want to change the world, whether that be in their communities or they want to come up with a solution to help more communities and more lives around the world. What advice do you have for them to just get started? Don't be afraid. Even if you feel like there's a failure, it's not because you don't learn unless you try and find that courage within you to keep doing it, to keep driving, to keep finding the solution that you want because it's there and you can do it. I love that. And our support, it comes together as a community. We don't do anything as individuals, nor should we. Everything that we create as Indigenous peoples, it's by us and it's for us, right? And so whenever I see my students be getting to create things and do things and they need support, it's about leaning on your community for that help. And not just your own community, your res, whatever, it's also Indigenous peoples as a whole. We're really here for each other, especially I think within the space that is tech and stuff like that. It's really scary, especially a lot of us are quite young and a lot of us are women. And we have a lot of big ideas and are not always taken seriously and it can be very difficult. But for me, whenever I'm struggling, I lean back on my mom and my grandma. They are bad asses and they're always killing it. And whenever I need advice, I always ask them and they give me the support that I need. So I always encourage everyone to lean on their family. That's beautiful. Well, we invite you all to join us in continuing this conversation. I know that we'll likely need to flip the room for the next session. So we'll be out in the lobby area. Come talk to Nicole, come talk to Danielle, come talk to myself and my colleague Francis about ways that you can join us in this journey. Thank you so much, everyone.