 to the show policy for the people. Our show focuses on effective policy solutions, evaluating effectiveness of Hawaii's, the policy on Hawaii's pressing issues with seasoned and emerging policymakers. I'm your host, Minara Mordecai. I'm a senior policy analyst for the Hawaii Institute for Public Affairs. But for my inaugural episode, I'm very excited to be joined by two brilliant and emerging policymakers, Rina Nagashima and Cameron De Puba. Born and raised in Honolulu, Cameron is a rising senior at the University of California, Berkeley. He's studying history and public policy. He has interned in DC for US Congressman Ed Case. He is currently volunteering for the city and county of Honolulu on issues of housing and homelessness. Rina was born in Japan and raised in Hawaii. She's a rising sophomore at Scripps College in Claremont, California, with a double major in public policy and math. During the pandemic, she took a gap year and returned home from college to get more involved locally. She interned for the US Congressman Kaika Helit in the Pacific and Asian Affairs Council. He's currently interning with the US Department of Agriculture. Welcome Cameron and Rina. You both came back to Hawaii during the pandemic to become more involved with local policymaking and to contribute to recovery efforts. So my first question for you is, how did you get started and motivated to begin a career in politics? Let's start with you, Rina. Hi, thanks for having us here, Manara. I guess I got started in politics and policymaking first as like a side hobby in high school. As Manara said, I was raised in like a household with parents from Japan. So we didn't talk about politics. And so I wasn't really exposed to it until high school through my friends and from the debate team in high school. And thinking about how civic engagement is a very important thing. I think that most people should have like politics as like something that's impacting to the degree. And I thought I was just one of those people until during college and like recently during COVID I started to see how that could develop into more of a career. Mostly because I had opportunities to participate in politics through political campaigning or through internships, mostly based in Hawaii that made me realize that I really like the fast-paced environment and the balance between having to think academically but also having to think about community and real people and interacting with other people. That's great. Karen, what about you? How did you get motivated? Yeah, thanks for having me on. I'd say a little bit different from Reena. My family is a fairly political family. My family is not necessarily very active in politics but certainly we do pay attention to politics. And there's always spirited debates around the dinner table at night between my family members and myself. And it's quite fun. But really in high school that's where I sort of first started to actually get more hands-on experience in politics and policy, I was really interested in history and I still study that. But being able to have experience volunteering on campaigns, my first campaign was when I was in high school that really opened a lot of doors to me and really showed me a lot that's out there and how important community engagement is. So really the way I look at it now it's not just a hobby like it was in high school but having been able to come back during the pandemic and having been able to really connect with my community, again, reconnect. After being in California for a year and a half almost it was really meaningful. Despite it sort of having me return on such a negative event there was hope, it was really, really great. So being able to connect and give back to the community through my political experience has been a great, great opportunity. Awesome. So Cameron, while I have you, I was wondering, I wanna talk to a little bit about your campaign with Mayor Blanjardiskin. What did you, I know you were quite engaged with that and what did you think of the civic engagement among young voters when you were working on the campaign? Did you witness apathy, enthusiasm? What's your opinion on this issue of young engaging young voters? Yeah, so this past year was actually really great for youth engagement and politics. The much higher number of youth voters and I think a lot of individuals like myself and my peers are really understanding that this is a really critical time for not just our state, for the nation as a whole and having to be able to share their voice and be able to participate at least in voting. That's been a huge growth at least locally in youth participation. But specifically on the campaign, actually, we had a lot of young volunteers. Actually, most of the campaign, our campaign was staffed by college students and our peers and both Rena and myself were on the campaign. That's how we got our start at least during the pandemic getting back into politics locally. So I really think the key is getting young people involved and just having them take the first step into being engaged and being informed in politics and policy, I think that's a critical step to take and voting is the perfect opportunity for that. So it's been really heartening to see so many more young people like myself and Rena getting involved through the campaigns and voting this past election. So do you feel like it was a little more energized than the past? Yeah, definitely. I think just the feeling in the air of the issues of the day and how important this past election would be for the future of our state, I think that really reverberated among young people, but also there's a lot of excitement. I think there is optimism in the state for the direction that our leaders can take it in the future. It's not just in the elite, which this past year, year and a half or so has been. So I think there's a lot of forward-looking momentum here. That's great. Rena, switching to you, I know that you didn't get involved with your family and you found your path to this career kind of on your own and through maybe school. What advice would you give to young people who want to do more public service in serving engagement in Hawaii? Do you have a path that's been successful for you and for your friends that you want to share? I would say the most difficult thing for young people hoping to get into public service would be knowing about the opportunities that are available to them, but also about having the confidence and self-advocacy skills to get positions or to excel in these positions. And so for me, the thing that helped me get my foot in the door the most and build my confidence in this arena was through volunteering, which was pretty low stakes and accepting to anybody. And so political campaigning again, I did some volunteering for a candidate in high school and then during the pandemic in 2020, I also volunteered for Mayor Blanjari. And these two experiences were really formative and building my confidence and feeling like I had a little more experience to then apply for other positions, especially since I think that for a lot of young people, especially from underserved communities, it can be intimidating to see different positions that might be competitive or require application processes and have the confidence to believe that the likelihood of getting that position and doing well in it is worth the process of having to apply for it. So I would say volunteering to build skills and confidence. Interesting. So you said you got involved in high schools. Is there something that your high school did that encouraged or built up that confidence that you think can be spread to schools across the state? I think for me, there are multiple things that built confidence in high school. The one that I was, one would be just political campaigning and volunteering in local campaigns. The other was high school debate that helped me with a lot of my public speaking skills. In middle school, I was a lot more shy and I had no awareness of a lot of political issues. I didn't know what Democrats versus Republicans were and that's just a product of the house that I grew up in because we all spoke Japanese. But through debate, I learned a lot about different issues or different talking points that people have on various sides of issues and that helped expand my awareness and also my confidence in my public speaking ability. Wonderful. So I actually, now I wanna transition to your recent work with the Hawaii Institute for Public Affairs. Both of you were hired as fellows during the pandemic to work on Hawaii 2.0 initiative. Could you talk more about what is Hawaii 2.0 and your experience with it? Rainie, if you wanna take this one. Yeah. I got involved in Hawaii 2.0 through the Hawaii Institute for Public Affairs side and through the volunteer side. Cameron originally reached out to Ben, the president of HIPAA, the Hawaii Institute for Public Affairs. And through that I got involved as well because I knew Cameron. And so both of us are fellows and we've been involved in helping Ben with more of the planning side of Hawaii 2.0 and Hawaii 2.0 itself as background is an economic policy plan that was pioneered by the governor's office to create a plan for economic recovery from COVID-19 by gathering a bunch of different stakeholders and industry leaders to look at what has happened during COVID-19, what has changed and how we can adapt our strategy moving forward to get out of this economic downturn. Okay, great. Cameron, do you have anything to add about your experience with it? Both of you worked on stakeholder engagement. So tell me more about that. What does that look like stakeholder engagement? What did you learn from that? Yeah, sort of thing. So the way we approached this and the way that the state approached this as well was going after a diverse group of experts in different fields and trying to get their perspective on how we can get ourselves and the state back on sound economic footing. And it's been really, really interesting to see so many different personalities and so many different fields, basically in a Zoom room discussing these same issues with each other. And I think it was extremely interesting to see that, but also it's important because we were really trying to get broad general public participation into it as well and get multiple different perspectives. I think the critical thing with Hawaii 2.0 is realizing that coming in with the belief that everyone plays their part in the economy so everyone really should be having a say in what the future of that looks like. And I really believe that getting the public participation and getting that broad feedback from different sectors was really critical to making sure that we had sound ideas and policies that could be generated out of this. And we're still working on that. I mean, still trying to solicit feedback and trying to get community engagement. But that was a real draw to me and I think that was why both Rina and I wanted to get involved with this and volunteer and spend time between classes helping this project out in this initiative. So the community engagement was a critical part of Hawaii. It still is. From your perspective in your generation and in college students, how do you think you can create similar engagement that can incorporate the voices of young people in policy making? But I know with the work that you did specifically work with experts. So shifting gears and looking more to younger generation, how would you engage and incorporate those voices? For Hawaii 2.0? Yeah, so we're actually, well, for Hawaii 2.0 specifically, we're working with this internship program that's run by some UH Business School alumni. And the idea is that they will be helping to look at some of the ideas that the Hawaii 2.0 experts would have produced and trying to give some concrete feedback and also use those ideas to potentially generate some longer term projects of their own and sort of facilitate those ideas and then eventually pitch those ideas, work on it themselves and sort of get more feedback and involvement in the process. But I really do think that is critical, like that is a key part of it. But just speaking generally, I think a critical way to incorporate young people is just to simply ask their opinion on a lot of issues. And I think that's what this show is doing right now. A lot of times people discuss things like brain drain or the discuss, well, what do youth need and what do young people want? But it's funny that a lot of times young people are not invited to actually participate in those same discussions. So I think really just reaching out to young people and giving opportunities, providing opportunities for them to participate and give back to their communities, that's just a great first step. And like Rena and I both said, a lot of times it really is just taking the first step to be more comfortable, to get more confidence and to say, you know what, I do have a voice. I do have a stake in what's going on around me and I should be able to participate and I share my thoughts and my ideas. That's great. I love that you mentioned that your voice, you are part of the generation that needs to be heard. So that's why I have you on the show. So I'm excited that we get to talk to you. We're gonna take a quick break and we will be back in one minute. Back, I'm your host, Minara Mordecai and you're watching Policy for the People. We just got back from a break and got a question from a viewer. The question is, young people have been disillusioned from the recent election. Do you have any advice how to bring back faith for the government to the young people? Cameron, if you wanna start with that. Yeah, sure thing. You know, I think it definitely depends on your perspective. I think there's a lot of winners and losers. I think that's a lot of, you know, depending on the outcome of the election and what you've politically aligned with, you might feel happy or more sad depending on it. But I think speaking specifically to your point about bringing back faith into government, a lot of local residents do not have faith in government. And that's really a sad and really, really a shame for us all, but I really think a key to this is actually holding our leadership accountable, our state leadership and our county leadership and making sure that they are prioritizing the needs of our local residents and making sure that as residents, if we see something we do not like, we're able to reach out to them and try and address those concerns. Really, leaders in our state, I believe, should be making decisions for the betterment of our people and making hard and tough decisions that they might not feel comfortable with for their political career, perhaps, but really it benefits the people themselves. So I think really it's incumbent on our leaders to take up the challenge of being able to be strong, tough leaders during difficult times. This is a hard crossroads and making those tough decisions are needed right now. But really it's incumbent on the public to make sure we're choosing leaders who are able to do that as well. Thank you. Irina, do you want to add anything about that? The question is, how do you bring back faith to government for the youth? Yeah, I definitely agree that voting for the people that you believe in or becoming engaged with candidates that you're inspired by can be a good way to see how the government can turn into the sort of makeup that you would like to see it in the future. And another thing is that an important thing for the government in order to gain public trust would be to continue trying to increase community input opportunities and reaching out into communities, whether it be like neighborhood board meetings or posting like signs in like public property, like advertising, like an upcoming vote, like showing that the government cares through community that is really important in regaining the trust in the government. Thank you. And thank you for this question, viewers. Please keep on coming if you have more questions for our guests. Right now, I want to transition also to the main topic of our show, which is the brain drain. And from your personal experience as college students, as younger generation and residents of Hawaii, what's been your experience with young people leaving Hawaii among your friends and your peers? Do you think many of them will be back after college and why and where not? Let's start with you, Irina. In my experience, a lot of my friends have gone to college on the mainland and it seems to me that they're not coming back not because they don't like Hawaii for the most part but because it seems unrealistic to come back straight after college. And so some of them, they plan on coming back after a couple of years. Others don't see themselves coming back for the foreseeable future. And some reasons include like the high cost of living or the lack of opportunities and whatever they're studying. And so once they're on the mainland, there are all these different opportunities that are a lot closer to them. And so my thought is that even if somebody from Hawaii is going to the mainland and has intentions of coming back after a couple of years, it's quite easy to get there and then realize that there are other opportunities or cheaper places to live and end up staying there instead. And so for me, I have been in a similar boat. I go to college on the mainland and I thought that coming back home to live in Hawaii and work in Hawaii was not possible but recently through experiences during my gap year where I've been able to get involved locally through like nonprofits and internships, I've been able to see how creating a network of people I know in Hawaii and having this experience in Hawaii can help increase my chances of being able to find further opportunities after college. So we'll just say some of that is there's an appearance or a belief that would be impossible to make it in Hawaii where in reality that there are opportunities and there are possibilities for young people to engage. I think it varies greatly depending on what people are studying and what people are hoping to do. Like if people are trying to be in government be like a member or work for a member then obviously those opportunities exist in every state and every county. But if somebody's trying to make it in an industry that doesn't really exist in Hawaii or it's a lot bigger somewhere else then that would definitely be a difference between working in Hawaii and working on the mainland. But at the same time I do think that Hawaii it's really unique in the sense that if you have personal connections with other people or once you get your foot in the door in certain industries it's a lot easier to unpack a lot more opportunities. And so that's something that I believe we should be focusing on in trying to get young people to come back is showing them that they can get their foot in the door and later get more opportunities from Hawaii. So going off of that that actually brings me to my next question. And if you Rena we're in a position of leadership and we're sitting at the decision makers table what are some of the policies you put into place to address this and to create a sense of support young people to either stay in Hawaii or come back? Yeah, this is related to like I guess my point about networking the importance of that this legislative session there are a lot of things coming up for like workforce development programs to help youth or other people get industry experience and this is mostly in response to COVID-19 and realizing that we needed to diversify economically. And I think programs like these are really good but we also need institutionally backed systems get through like different training programs or through different experiential opportunities and then onto the workforce. And so if I were in a position of leadership one thing I would focus on would be first to get people in the University of Hawaii systems to have experiential opportunities directly funneling people from their classroom knowledge to being able to work with real people in Hawaii. And then for people who go off to college on the mainland I think a great opportunity to show them that they can come back to Hawaii and work here is to have different summer opportunities. And so for example my brother goes to college on the mainland but this summer he is working with a University of Hawaii astronomy professors in a lab and this was funded by the National Science Foundation. And so this is like an example of a government backed research project that supports college students who are from Hawaii but may not be in Hawaii for college. I'm encourages them to see that they can make it in the field that they're interested in. Thank you, these are great examples. I hope we do put them into place. Cameron, I have the same set of questions for you. What's been your experience with your friends and peers leaving Hawaii and whether you have something to add with your perception is on why this is happening? And also give me some examples of what you would do as a leader. Yeah, sure thing. So I think Rena really hit all the points adequately and that's the same thing I hear from a lot of the other peers that I have. And I think I grouped the three most common responses in order would be the first one is that there's a lack of opportunity locally. People feel like there will be not enough pay or their ideal job in their field of interest as I exist. So like an example is one of my friends is interested in the banking industry from a compliance standpoint. It feels like you won't have the same opportunities for growth locally that he would in a somewhere like LA or Wall Street. So he's planning to move away from that. And the second one would be high cost of living. I have another friend and he says that he wants to live alone. He would want to live in Hawaii except that it's not feasible for him at an entry level salary to live on his own or with his friends as roommates. That's just not possible. So because of that, he wants to move somewhere cheaper. And I have another one where I'd group it as like Island Beaver or they just want to explore somewhere else. And you can't really change much about this. But I see that the first two high cost of living and lack of opportunities locally can really be addressed a lot. So some of the things that I would look at if I were in a position of leadership, I look at first the current makeup of Hawaii's economy. And I think this is where a root of a lot of the issues are especially with things like a lack of opportunities. We rely heavily on tourism. And because of that, tourism has given us a lot of jobs, but unfortunately a lot of them are, they don't pay very much. On average, the hospitality industries, the lowest paying industry across the nation and particularly in the United States or in Hawaii. So when we think about that, we really have to think about moving to alternative industries that are higher paying. I think a lot of the efforts that we've done to try and diversify has been focused on looking at things like agriculture, looking at things like finding alternatives to tourism. But really, I think we need to make sure while we're doing that, we're hitting jobs and expanding jobs at all income levels, especially for those in the professional level. So that way we retain a lot of the people who have high educations who are our most skilled local residents. And we wanna make sure we keep those individuals locally. For example, we have a lot of workforce development programs currently underway with the idea of transitioning people out of the hospitality industry. Unfortunately, if there's no jobs at the end of that training, we could risk those people even going away. Right now as it is, we're losing a lot of our most talented people. So looking at areas, not just in agriculture, agriculture I think can play a part in our resiliency, but really looking at more industries and putting grants like we do with agriculture locally or industries like the technology industry or more professional industries, I think that'll be really critical because we are losing a lot of those people. Yeah, that's a good point. The workforce training has to go with the job creation. So thank you for bringing it up. And this has been a great conversation. I'm so happy that I got to have you as my first guest for the first show. I learned a lot from you as always. Thank you for being on the show. We once again, we talked with Rina Nagashima and Cameron de Pula. My name is Benara Mordecai. I am the host for the show, Policy for the People and please join me next time. Thank you and aloha.