It started with one afternoon.
Fred Glawischnig — a longtime technology and instruction professional, and an instructor at Saskatchewan Polytechnic — completed fourteen online AI courses and earned every certificate. And still, he didn't feel able to actually use the tools. The learning was cold, isolated, and focused on finding the right answer rather than solving a real problem.
So one afternoon he and his son Alex, a computer science student, stopped studying and started building. Side by side at the kitchen table, they took a made-up business from a single idea all the way to a live website — in one sitting, using everyday AI tools anyone can access.
That afternoon taught them more than all fourteen courses combined. The difference wasn't the tools — it was the doing. They hadn't watched another video or chased another quiz; they had built something real, together, and walked away knowing they could do it again.
If two people at a kitchen table could go from an idea to a working website in an afternoon, why was everyone else being handed certificates they couldn't use?
Why we built Launch Pad Institute
The more Fred and Alex looked, the clearer the problem became. AI is quickly becoming as fundamental as reading email or using a phone — but the way it's being taught is leaving people behind. Courses are expensive, abstract, and built for people who already have time, money, and a technical head start. The ones who could benefit most — low-income learners, newcomers, Indigenous communities, and people facing barriers to work — are the ones most likely to be locked out.
That's the divide we set out to close. Not by selling another online course, but by sitting beside people the way Fred and Alex sat beside each other — short on lecturing, heavy on building, with an instructor right there until the moment it clicks. We call it Hear–See–Do, and it means no one leaves with a certificate they can't apply. They leave with a finished, working result and the confidence to keep going on their own.
To make that sustainable, we built Launch Pad Institute as a non-profit. Free and subsidized workshops for underserved learners are funded by grants, donations, and the earned revenue from our paid institutional and corporate workshops — which we reinvest straight back into community programs. Every paid seat helps open a supported one.
Where we're headed
That kitchen-table afternoon became a method, the method became an organization, and the organization is now a growing community of learners and partners across Saskatchewan. Everything we do still traces back to the same belief that started it all:
A future where AI opens doors
A future where AI literacy opens doors instead of widening divides — where anyone, regardless of income, background, or circumstance, can use today's most powerful tools to build a better life.
Real skills, a real result
To make practical, hands-on AI education accessible to the people most often left behind by it — so they leave not with a certificate they can't use, but with real skills, a finished result, and the confidence to keep building.
"The future is better when we build it together."