Akwesasne Cultural Center, Inc.

NAI Gen Ops

Program Opportunity Statement (Recommended 300 words or less) The Akwesasne Cultural Center is a public meeting area for the community. Akwesasne as whole provides a few immersive language programs for children and adults. What is missing, is a more flexible and centrally located language program for children and adults, to learn Kanien’kéha. Most language learning opportunities have a time requirement that most working professionals cannot commit to. These same opportunities are during the day when most working professionals are at their full-time employment. This is where we saw the opportunity to address the need of the working professional and students that attend schools during the day, by providing language resources after work and school. In researching the best way to offer materials and other resources, we came across the Can 8 VirtuaLab. The Can 8 VirtuaLab is like the Rosetta Stone software program. The Can 8 VirtuaLab is provided by the Kanien’kéha Language and Resource Centre. Not only does the Kanien’kéha Language and Resource Centre provide the language software they also produce training booklets to go along with the software. This grant will allow us to supply the needed resources for asynchronous learning that will allow the community member to learn at their own pace. Along with these new resources, any community member can access our preexisting language resources, like our language books and varied media from our library to aid in their learning. When the Kanien’kéha Language program takes off and the program establishes itself, we will seek to expand the program by hiring teachers and tutors to assist with the learning. This grant opportunity is a steppingstone into a new possible world with Kanien’kéha becoming the first language for all Akwesasron:non.