The STEAM Connection: Danielle Boyer Makes Robotics and Tech Education Accessible to Indigenous Youth

The STEAM Connection is an American non-profit established by Danielle Boyer, an Indigenous robotics inventor and youth activist. Through STEAM Connection, Boyer makes robotics and tech education accessible to Indigenous youths across the nation, reaching over 800,000 children since its establishment in 2019. One of the organization’s core programs is to give out EKGAR Bots for free. These are beginner-level robotics kits that cost less than $20 to make per unit. EKGAR Bots give Indigenous youth the means to access the otherwise expensive tools and technology required to learn robotics. This is why the work that The STEAM Connection does is aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals of Quality Education and Reduced Inequalities.

Danielle Boyer had set up The STEAM Connection as a way to honour and reflect on her own childhood experiences. As a young girl from the Sault Ste Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, she loved science and tech but could not afford to attend local extracurricular STEM programs. She was finally able to join the robotics team in high school, but being the only girl in the club, she had experienced harassment, bullying and alienation. Hence, she built The STEAM Connection as a safe and accessible space for Indigenous youth, despite their gender, sexuality, or any other backgrounds. 

To bolster this personal connection is the fact that today, 18 percent of tribal reservation residents have no access to any form of the internet. On top of that, in rural Native communities of America, only 9 percent of households have access to personal computers. Without doubt, these are some of the leading causes behind why only 0.4 percent of the American engineering workforce are of Indigenous backgrounds, a statistic that The STEAM Connection aims to change for the better.

Another aspect of The STEAM Connection’s mission is to advocate for the use of tech and robotics to share and preserve Indigenous culture. They have managed to do this by inventing the SkoBots, a wearable language revitalization robot for Indigenous languages. The STEAM Connection students are given the tools, materials and resources to build their own SkoBots for free. Each SkotBot is personalized to help the student and anyone around them to learn their own Indigenous language. Once again, this is based on Boyer’s personal reflection into how her own Indigenous language, the Ojibwemowin, is now an endangered language.

The STEAM Connection, founded by Danielle Boyer, is a groundbreaking non-profit that is transforming the landscape of robotics and tech education for Indigenous youth. By providing accessible resources such as the EKGAR Bots, Boyer addresses significant barriers to entry in STEM fields, empowering over 800,000 children since 2019. The organization’s mission not only promotes quality education and reduced inequalities, but it also honors and revitalizes Indigenous culture through innovative projects like the SkoBots. Through Boyer’s visionary leadership, The STEAM Connection is not only enhancing educational opportunities but also fostering a new generation of Indigenous engineers and technologists, ensuring a brighter and more equitable future.

Find out more about The STEAM Connection on their website www.steamconnection.org or on Danielle Boyer’s Instagram @danielleboyer.