Established in 2014, Digital Natives Academy is an award-winning non-profit dedicated to cultivating the next generation of digital innovators, creators, and changemakers.
Rooted in three pou, design, culture, and impact, our vision is to equip young people with the creative tech skills, industry exposure, and leadership mindset to thrive in high-growth sectors. Through project-based learning and real-world challenges, we empower young people to honour their identity, uplift their communities, and contribute meaningfully to a rapidly evolving world.
At DNA, we back talent with tools. We identify and support learners with the skill, tenacity, and leadership potential to move from consumers of technology to creators and developers shaping its future. Our goal is not just to inspire, but to prepare young people to lead.
Illuminating Accredited Pathways
As part of our commitment to strengthening the collective skills and future workforce of this country, we have established our own Private Training Establishment (PTE). This strategic move enables us to deliver NZQA-accredited programmes that are tailored to the needs of our learners and responsive to the demands of industry.
To learn more about Native Tech, click here.
Creating a Nation of
Bold & Creative Thinkers
We are building communities of fearless, future-focused thinkers who draw on their unique perspectives to tackle the world’s biggest challenges, from internet governance to the rise of artificial intelligence.
Over the years, DNA has become more than a platform for skill acquisition and career pathways, it’s become a sanctuary from an often cold, uncaring world where the outliers of society can find whānau, friendship and most importantly a sense of belonging.
Whose Future? Whose Intelligence?
At Digital Natives Academy, we believe in bold, creative thinking grounded in curiosity and responsibility. For more than a decade, we’ve worked to empower rangatahi, young people, not just to use technology, but to shape it, to become the architects, critics, and guardians of the digital worlds they will inherit.
With the rapid acceleration of artificial intelligence, we find ourselves at a critical crossroads.
AI is not a neutral force. It is shaped by the values, assumptions, and agendas of those who build it, and too often, those builders do not reflect our communities, and do no hold our values. They do not carry our stories. They do not design with our mokopuna, with future generations in mind. And they do not ask the questions we would:
- Whose intelligence is this?
- What worldview does it serve?
- What is lost in the automation of human decision-making?
We are told that AI will solve everything. That it will make things faster, smarter, more efficient. But faster for whom? Smarter by what measure? And at what cost?
Artificial intelligence should not be built in our image, it must be built with us and by us, or not at all. Because the future doesn’t belong to machines. It belongs to those skilled enough to shape and navigate them
