Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 14, Number 8, 1 August 1997 — Program teaches native Hawaiians technical skills [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Program teaches native Hawaiians technical skills

Sean Gonzales A six-week summer program is giving native Hawaiian youth a better ehanee in the ever-changing job market. Alu Like, ine. and TekPlace joined forces to help 18 students from a pool of 700 applicants learn job skills necessary to survive in today's work force. Many people are finding that the skills they learned only a eouple of years ago are now obsolete because of advances in technology. Young men and women ages 16 to 20 learn the basics of typing and 10-key puneh and are exposed to computer applications. The students learned how to create brochures, business cards, videos and web sites. They also learned different types of business eommunieahon and procedures.

"People learn best what they need to know when they need to know it," says Shaunja Yamaguchi, m executive vice president of Research and Development at TekPlace. Students are not just taught how to do things in the program, rather the 1 process goes one step further so that * they apply their knowledge to actual projects. Students are paid for their work. They deal directly with TekPlace clients. One project they completed was the annual report of the Department of Labor and Alu Like, ine. Critical thinking, problem-solving

and eommunieahon is only part of what these students really learn — ultimately, they learn self-esteem, says Yamaguchi.

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