Youth Can Do I.T. Limited Jamaica has been named the sole Caribbean recipient among 10 grantees of the Metaverse Communities Challenge, a joint effort between the innovation lab Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and Meta.
Founded in 2016 by Lianne McNaughton, Youth Can Do I.T. provides tech education to young people in an effort to create new and better job opportunities.
According to the IDB, the 10 grantees were chosen from a pool of 370 proposals submitted by communities in 22 countries across Latin America and the Caribbean.
The Metaverse Communities Challenge aims to foster positive social and economic change for underserved populations while also exploring the ways in which people build and explore metaverse communities.
The selected communities are using augmented reality and virtual reality to tackle issues such as health, education, job creation, female entrepreneurship, culture, and urban accessibility.
IDB has praised the communities for their strong presence, impactful solutions, and effective use of augmented reality, and mixed reality applications.
As part of the prize package, the grantees will receive online training in community building, responsible innovation, and virtual and augmented reality, as well as a $10,000 grant to further their metaverse community goals.
They will also receive customized business coaching in areas where the community has opportunities for growth and development.
Finally, the grantees will attend a one-week residency at Meta’s office in S?o Paulo to meet with experts in the field and gain first-hand knowledge and experience with the latest metaverse technologies and applications, and showcase their metaverse community.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, is an American technology conglomerate that builds technologies that help people connect, find communities and grow businesses.
