Founded in 2001, What Kids Can Do (WKCD) is a nonprofit organization based in Providence, R.I. that sees young people as valuable resources and as knowledge makers of the future. WKCD’s main target group is children who are marginalized by poverty, race, and language. Toward this end, WKCD works with adults to encourage children to fulfill their potential.
Through its publishing arm, Next Generation Press, and its website, WKCD publicizes stories of children in the roughest urban areas of America to draw the attention of national policy makers and encourage youth to become social documenters, knowledge creators, and advisors to educators, peers, and parents.
WKCD is a grant-making organization as well. It collaborates with youth to create multimedia, curricula, and research that expand conventional views of what constitutes challenging learning and achievement. WKCD is funded by foundations such as MetLife, AT&T, Forum for Youth Investment, W.K. Kellogg among others.