Building a culturally grounded digital hub that connects Indigenous communities
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Challenge
Indigenous women, girls, two-spirit, transgender, and gender-diverse people across Yukon and Northern BC were navigating support services that lived in a dozen different places, if they could be found at all. The IWIC Virtual Resource Centre needed to pull all of it into one calm, trustworthy home: crisis response, housing, cultural revitalization, and 2SLGBTQIA+ advocacy, side by side. And it had to do this in a way that reflected Indigenous worldviews rather than flattening them into a standard directory.
Solution
We started with the brand itself, shaping the name, logo, and brand guide, then built a site with an information architecture that meets people where they are. Resources are grouped the way real lives are lived: Cultural Revival, Health and Wellbeing, Youth, Elders, Crisis Support, and 2SLGBTQIA+. A service provider directory connects visitors to more than 40 local organizations in a few taps. Under the hood, Directus gives the IWIC team a friendly place to keep every resource current, and Astro serves it all as a fast, lightweight site.
Results
Over the past year the Centre reached 1,594 people and served 2,254 page views, up 182% and 158% year over year, so the audience was climbing well before the new build went live. The rebuild is made to carry that momentum: it loads quickly, meets top accessibility standards, and is easy for people and search engines alike to navigate, all on a site the team can now update themselves without waiting on a developer. For a resource that people often reach in a hard moment, fast and accessible isn't a nice-to-have, it's the whole point.
