Kesho Wazo Platform | Portland Civic Design Fest 2017
Project Champions: Joe Menard & David Thete
What is your project about?
Kesho Wazo is a youth led arts and activism collective that has empowered many young creative minds in Portland to bring their ideas into reality. Kesho Wazo’s activities have included organizing three day festivals, hosting theatrical art showcases at space gallery, collaborating with the Portland Museum of Art Homer High school Fellows, facilitating community dialogues, and holding a candle light vigil for victims of police brutality. All have been in the spirit of building a creative and passionate youth culture in Portland.
Our project is about creating a platform for Portland’s youth that makes the process of becoming a passionate and civically engaged individual an easy and fun experience.
Building this platform the first step of many into the world of empowerment through technology. We will be using the civic design fest to kick off Kesho Wazo’s newest branch: WazoTech. We also plan to recruit designers at the civic design fest to be a part of this evolutionary and exciting facet of Kesho Wazo.
What do you have so far?
So far we have brainstormed ideas as to what this will look like, such as an innovative phone app or website but we have done no physical designing. We are certainly open to any ideas that will make this platform the best it can be. By keeping the designing process as open as possible we hope that people are interested in building this platform from the ground up!
What do you need?
We will need open minded people who are willing to focus their designing efforts on youth empowerment. Experience with app, website, graphic and artistic design are skills that we think will be critical for the physical designing process. In addition, experience with youth and community organizing, group facilitating, and educational programming, will be helpful when formulating the initial needs and feel of the platform. That being said, we will gladly welcome any civically passionate people to our team to get as many perspectives as possible. For materials we will need drawing paper, markers, pencils, a dry erase board (if possible), and people with laptops that are capable of website building and app design.
Don’t forget to RSVP to Portland Civic Design Fest, September 23rd at Mechanics Hall, Portland, Maine. Part of the National Day of Civic Hacking!
Hosted by Code for Maine, Portland Global Shapers, and Maine Charitable Mechanics Association. Sponsored by Ad Hoc, Workplace Transformation Facilitation, Seth Rigoletti: Leadership Coach, Project Login, and IDEXX.
