Over its 16-year existence, an American creative education nonprofit for kids of color has taught design skills to more than 1,500 children to date – and counting.
Maurice Woods, the founder of the Inneract Project nonprofit and principal design lead at Microsoft, believes that making the design industry more inclusive requires a long-term commitment and a real investment in Black communities, adding, “The main thing that has always kept me grounded throughout the years is the people and the passion for seeing people in our program be impacted.”
Among the design skills taught through the project, which is based in California’s San Francisco Bay Area, there is app design, branding, logo design, and coding. Woods founded the program to counter the lack of representation in the graphic design community – just 3% of designers self-identify as black. Through his project, Woods aims to ensure the design isn’t just for those with privilege, means, or access, and to form partnerships with companies interested in a generational view of change.
