 and welcome to Think Tech Hawaii. This is our partnerships and education show today. I'm your host, Ethan Allen. Thank you for joining us. Today, we're going to talk about a recently completed event, the Micronesian Youth Summit, an annual event. And here are our two folks to talk to us about it, Caroline and Carl, and Austin Lipley. If I got that right. Almost. Both UH students, I guess. Both sort of affiliated with VR Oceania in various ways. And both very much involved with the Micronesian Youth Summit that just completed last week, basically. So tell me briefly about what this is, because I suspect a lot of our viewers don't actually know what the Micronesian Youth Summit is. Well, the Micronesian Youth Summit is basically kind of like an annual theme that got started two years ago. And it's more of just a way we can bring the Micronesian students in the high schools and middle schools together to kind of get them college ready and at the same time, kind of get them embracing their culture. OK. And so it's meant a sort of a celebration, a chance to network with one another, see some role models, get some encouragement, all those sorts of things. And about how many students were there? This year, I want to say about close to 300, 350. We had a good turnout. That's quite a right. And they are from all of Micronesia writ large, basically? From the FSM all the way to the Marshall Islands, everywhere in between. OK, excellent, excellent. And how long was this all day event, basically? The registration is from 830, starts at 830. And this year, we ended probably about 430. OK, sounds like a good. And so there are speakers, workshops, various sorts of things. Tell me a little bit about some of those that might have. A lot of our keynote speakers that we asked to come out are usually representatives of the Micronesian community here in Hawaii. Our breakout sessions consist of either having college students like us on a panel to show the students that there are people who look like them, members of their community that are in higher education and that are succeeding in higher education. And then we also have panels from a lot of the NGOs that work with the Micronesian community here. And for this year, we had a lot of Micronesian professionals that we had, members of, I forgot the name of, a gentleman that came from Madison, but he's from Chuuk. And so he delivered a special keynote. They were actually one of the sponsors also, Madison. So just key figures like that that they can see that are professional Micronesians and they're succeeding, like Carol said. Excellent. That's very important for young people to see that they can fit in. They are people from their communities who are actually out there succeeding in this, essentially, of foreign land. Land very different from where they grew up, particularly if they're from an outer island somewhere. Yeah. So one of the key things in people I think don't always appreciate the real profound difference that these students have to deal with. It's not like a normal student going from middle school and high school here who's been on Oahu and their whole lives. A lot of these students are coming in sometimes from these very small islands of 300, 400 people where they've lived their whole lives and suddenly being dumped into this urban thing. And a lot of times with the school systems in the region are they don't teach English skills in the same way that English isn't spoken really very much other than in school, right? Yeah, so they don't give a chance to practice it. They don't use it all the time so they aren't as facile. This puts them at a significant disadvantage in school. So again, I think it's valuable what you do here to encourage and support. So you also highlight, I assume students who are, I mean obviously you're in college doing well so that's highlighting that. You also highlight some of their peers in high school and middle school who are making strides there. So we're actually a part of a club at UH Manoa. We have our own Micronesian club that's called Micronesia Connections. And so during these youth summits, we have our own table. This year Shyamunad, their Micronesian club came out. Just like again for the kids so they can come and see that there are Micronesian students at these kind of universities that are making it and if they go, they'll have a place where they can fit in and feel comfortable. Yeah, and it's a growing population certainly but growing from a very small number is him. I know Shyamunad's never worked on this for some years, really specifically focused on places like Chu. I know they had a cadre of nursing students at one point from Chu can work with them as a tight knit group basically to get them through the program. I think the most profound part of the youth summit for me is that the people who engage with these students are people who not only show up as Micronesians but they show out as Micronesian. They make a point of either wearing their traditional attire or speaking in their language when addressing these students and I hear students who are like, wow, he's in college and he has an accent just like me and he's making it, you know? And for me, I think that's one of the things that these students really look forward to when coming to the youth. Right, I think that kind of role modeling is really critical and unfortunately fairly rare at this point still. That's doubly why your event is important. And particularly given there is, you know, a lot of people think of Micronesians as being sort of just one group of people but it's really a very diverse group. I mean, even I know, I did work for a while out in Yap and I know Yap has what four distinct, mutually incomprehensible languages and then multiple dialects of each and that's just Yap which is, I guess the smallest of the four states within the federated states of Micronesia, right? 18 or 20 major different languages in the region or something? We're from the same country. We're from two different states and we can't understand each other's language. We have completely different cultures, completely different languages, even the outer islands within the main islands and the states have their own different cultures and their different languages. So I'm from Yap, the outer islands. And even within Yap state, you know, the outer islanders come down to Yap, we have to speak English because that's how different the languages are. Right, yeah, exactly. And I think it's important even for the kids here because a lot of them, especially these generations coming up, they've never been back home. So this kind of gives them that chance to see outside what they see at home, see outside of, maybe their Marshallese family or their Chukies family. They can see other islands like Palau, Yap. Right, and I understand there's multiple people coming and going through the same kind of challenges together, meeting with them, learning from them, hopefully picking up maybe some kind of mentorship relation, that'd be great. Does the school system support this in any way? It's just pretty much you guys doing this. So I'm a social work major and I know the Myron B. Thompson School of Social Work at Mandela. I know that they played a huge part in securing the venue at UH. This year was at the campus center and so the connections that we have over there, well the connections that we are Oceania has with the School of Social Work definitely helped because I think last year they had them, they had the U.S. Summit at East West Center. I think it was a good space but I think for that number of kids, I think it was just a little bit too small. The campus center was really, I think, it played a big role, you know. Yeah, I suspect as the word gets out this thing probably is gonna grow each year, right? Because I mean I don't know that anyone has hard and fast figures but there are certain big numbers of Micronesian students within the A-12 system here and it's gotta be getting bigger every year, I've got to assume. It's because of the steady migration here. So that's gotta be sort of a, I guess a bittersweet thing for you guys, right? I mean, more of your fellow country folks are showing up here which is great on one level but it means your country's youth are a lot of believe in and as you say, not getting back very much. What do your parents or relatives from the home area tell you about that in terms of what impacts that's having? Well for me, so I grew up here in Hawaii. I went to Lunalilo Elementary School, went to Washington for about a year and then I moved back to Point Bay. Growing up in Hawaii, I didn't know what it was to be Micronesian. Like, no one in the school system because of my good grades expected me to be Micronesian and they would always be surprised when they found out. And then moving back to Point Bay, I finally got the idea of who I was, where I came from and then when I came back to Hawaii for university, I realized that for a lot of my community, it's not a choice moving out here. If I could have gotten my PhD in Point Bay, I promise you I would have stayed there to do that. If my uncles or my aunts could have gotten the medical care they need back home, they definitely would have stayed home to do it. So as a college student, I understand that I have to come here, finish my education, but I also have to go back because that's where the development is needed and that's why I'm sent out here to grow. Right, so you can bring knowledge and expertise and skills that are all needed back to Point Bay. Because the system that's implemented in my island is a Western system. So the only way to help that system succeed is to come into the Western world and learn how to master that Western system. Right, much as we all might sort of long for the good old days, you can't turn the clock back, right? Now ideally, you'd like to see the education systems both here in Hawaii and across Micronesia, prepare students so well so as they get ready to graduate, they had a choice and they could say, I'm gonna go back and live the old style life or I'm gonna go off and become a rocket scientist or whatever. That's unfortunately, I think, too big a challenge for education systems here and much less across Micronesia. That's wonderful. I think I have a lot of the same experiences. I also grew up in the diaspora. I was born and raised first generation born US citizen in North Carolina. And it was nice, we had a Micronesian community out there so all of us got together and I guess you could say it was as close to back home as I could get. Being with my family that was there. And I guess when I moved over here, it was kind of interesting to see the social climate with a lot of the problems going on, especially with the Micronesians coming in, being the newest migrant group, migrant population here. And so I think as far as my responsibility back home, I think all of us as Micronesians, we have that sense of responsibility to at least try and aid back home as much as we can. So I mean, that could come into a lot of different types of things like if somebody passes away and we send money, like those kind of responsibilities, those are responsibilities that I don't think us as Micronesians, whether growing up here in the US or wherever, I don't think we can escape those kind of things. Yeah, it's very interesting to see the strong sense of family and community that across Micronesia we've seen among kids, kids who have been offered in some cases chances to come to Hawaii or go to Guam for higher education at times to turn it down because of their family obligations. They have to stay home and take care of younger siblings or whatever it may be, which is for the shame in some ways, but it's very admirable too that the strong sense of community, I don't think you see nearly that much of it in the broader US community. Some families are a little more tight-knit than others, but I don't, in general, you're gonna see that exact same kind of thing. So, I'll just put you on North Carolina. I spent a little bit of time in North Carolina. What's the point? This is Chapel Hill. I was agreeable, that's only an hour and a half, South Carolina. Sure, sure. Yeah, okay. Anyhow, so this Micronesian youths summit is gonna be put on again next year? Are you already starting to plan that? Debriefing from this year? Yes, so we're definitely gonna debrief. We have our venue already locked and secured. Hopefully nothing goes wrong. March 7th is the planned date for the next Micronesian youths summit. I'll tell you what, we're gonna maybe explore that a little further when we come back. Right now we're gonna take a brief break. I'm here on Pacific Partnerships in Education talking about the Micronesian youths summit with Caroline Carl and Alastin Halaipoli. I got that wrong again. Sorry. We'll be right back after one minute. Hey, Stan the Energyman here on Think Tech Hawaii. And they won't let me do political commentary, so I'm stuck doing energy stuff, but I really like energy stuff, so I'm gonna keep on doing it. So join me every Friday on Stan the Energyman at lunchtime, at noon on my lunch hour. We're gonna talk about everything energy, especially if it begins with the word hydrogen. We're gonna definitely be talking about it. We'll talk about how we can make Hawaii cleaner, how we can make the world a better place, just basically save the planet. Even Miss America can't even talk about stuff like that anymore. We got it nailed down here. So we'll see you on Friday at noon with Stan the Energyman. Aloha. Aloha, I'm Yukari Kunisue, the host of Konnichiwa Hawaii, Japanese talk show on Think Tech Hawaii. Konnichiwa Hawaii is all Japanese broadcast show and it's streamed live on Think Tech at 2 p.m. every other Monday. Thank you so much for watching our show. We look forward to seeing you then. I'm Yukari Kunisue, mahalo. And welcome back to Pacific Partnerships in Education. I'm your host Ethan Allen. Thanks for coming back with us. We're here, I'm here with Caroline Karl and Austin Halliope. Oh, sorry, sorry. When we're talking about the 2019 Micronesian Youth Summit, but just as we were finishing up on the previous part of the show, we were looking ahead to the 2020. So let me ask you, if there's kids around who want to get involved with this and be a part of it, either as a participant on just as for attending, or as they want to offer themselves a role model, a participant, a more active role. They call you guys, is there a website they can go to? What's the deal? From experience, the people who end up coming to the Youth Summit as kind of spectators, I remember last year, a lot of the spectators were like, hey, can we actually sit on the next panel in the next session? And so we made that happen. People who come out usually they end up signing up with We Are Oceania on that day to volunteer for the next year. And so contacting We Are Oceania by email or contacting them by phone. We have, we also have all the information online where Oceania just revamped their whole website. So they have a set, like a specific tab just for the Youth Summit where volunteers just a volunteer registration form and just an event registration form if they just want to attend. Excellent. You can feature a lot of different aspects in terms of sort of the academic areas, language arts, social sciences. All these have been, of course, my favorite STEM, Science, Biology, Engineering, and Math. All of these, of course, have applications and uses and it'd be great to get students into all these different pathways, right? Yeah. So if I might, what are you guys majoring in? I'm a biochemistry major. All right, there we go, all right. I'm a social work major. Okay, all right. Both valuable things. Biochemistry is a hot topic these days. A lot of very fascinating stuff going on in there. So, and next year you say it's March 7th, or even fixed, and it's gonna be at the university again, or? It's gonna be at the university at the same place, the ballroom, was that 3rd floor? Yeah, 3rd floor. Campus center ballroom. Campus center ballroom. No, I've been to a number of conferences there. It's a nice space for a conference of 100 people. Yeah. Good, good. So, you hinted earlier at the fact that there's some tension that comes on, but because as Hawaii seems to be done with every wave of migrants who have entered Hawaii, whoever's for the current new entry gets a certain amount of backlash. Right. What do you say? How does the students deal with that? And that's gotta be rough. You can go first. I think for me that's pretty much the reason why I major in what I'm majoring. From what I've seen, a lot of the Micronesians, students tend to stick together, which makes sense, you know, you try to find somebody, you know, like you, and then. But yeah, I know that the social climate is very hard, especially here, I think, I don't think blame is to be, you know, on either side. I think it's just a lack of understanding on both. Like you said, you know, there's been different waves of immigration, and I feel like each and every wave had their own, you know, problems, and we're just the next wave with our problems. Hawaii is a wonderful state for bringing people together and mixing them in. It's intriguing to me when I first got out here to find that are these Micronesian enclaves and communities scattered all over the mainland US, though, in Arkansas, you mentioned North Carolina, I know Oregon has some various different places where apparently one or two or a few people went or settled there for usually for work reasons, right? Because there was a lot of full of good work that could send money back home and all, and then their cousin comes and the brother-in-law comes and the next thing you know, yeah, there's 50 or 100 people there, right? And I think that a lot of times we forget that that's a natural tendency for descendants of a navigating society. We've always been a part of a diaspora, whether it's the modern one or the ancient one where we just traveled by canoe. And I think that's where a lot of, not just the students, but their parents grapple with the confusion that, oh, as descendants of a navigating society, we understand as islanders, when people come to our island, to our homes, we welcome them because we understand that they're in the diaspora searching for home, searching for help, searching for new beginnings. So how do we begin to kind of help other people understand that as descendants of a navigating society, that that's what we do. We travel, we find new home, and at the same time we welcome anyone, wherever they come from because that's just who we are. Very admirable, yes. And that's particularly for low-lying nations like the Marshall Islands and Kirobos down in Southern Hemisphere. That's becoming a more urgent problem all the time, right? Because these places with the rising sea levels are rapidly losing their land, and what land is left rapidly not is being salinated by king tides and all on, so it's not fertile anymore. I know in Kirobos, they're actually buying old oil drilling rigs and anchoring them in some of the lagoons there, so that when the islands become uninhabitable, people will still have a place to live and they can maintain at least a remnant population there and still claim their land, right? Because it actually brings a very interesting sort of legal question. What happens when your country disappears off the face of the earth? How do you still exist? And I know they've also worked out some deal with, I think, New Zealand or maybe Fiji to get a fairly big track of land. Fiji, that's right. They are, and again, they can have a larger community, but again, they're faced with the same issues, right? All the island nations are doing this, though. And it's issues like these that the Micronesian use them and also brings to the attention of these students that come because they have that disconnect and they grow up here. The youth summit allows them to come into a space where they learn not just about the importance of their identities, but how those identities are so deeply connected to their islands and the problems that those islands face and why education is an important way to help fix those problems or address them. Right. I think, as you mentioned, identity. I think for most of these kids growing up, especially the ones born and raised here, I think they struggle a lot with that sense of identity. Being born here, but is this home for them? So I think the youth summit also offers that place to kind of claim that identity if they should so choose. No, that's incredibly valuable for them. Yeah, for a student who hasn't had direct connection with the islands to build at least some sense of community that we can see people who really are from and directed from the islands are from their same previous homeland or their parents' homeland or what it may have been. Yeah, it's gotta be valuable in helping them establish and realize the power, appreciate the things they bring. So do you see, a lot of people are very worried about 2022, 2023 when the COFA agreements expire if something doesn't happen. What from your viewpoints are likely to happen at that point? I think for me, I'm not a political science guru, but I think just speaking out of my own personal opinion, I think a lot of my Canadians are definitely worried about this, especially the COFA nations. I think that, especially with this administration, I feel like you hear both sides of the spectrum, you hear sides of the spectrum where they're worried, then you hear the other side, well, we do have a lot to offer and we are valuable. So that sense of security is kind of somewhere in the community, but that sense of being worried is always gonna be there also. For me with the compact, the way I understand it is that it's two parts, the subsidiary agreement and the tertiary agreement. And the tertiary agreement is valuable to the US in that it claims us and our oceans as a military strategic zone. And the subsidiary agreement is the part that everyone's worried about where we won't be given aid to continue growing our government systems. So I'm worried that we won't get the aid that we need to finish what was promised in the first place, but I'm also not afraid that the compact is gonna end. Because back home, you see literally Australia, China, and US trying to build things all at the same time. You have superpowers within. On the same island. Like looking across the street, you see all of these superpowers trying to help us build. So it tells you that we do have value to the entire world, not just the US. I know China's been doing a lot as far as offering scholarships to my condition students and bringing them to China. So these are students that are going to be going to China, learning how to speak Chinese, getting familiar with that. That's culture. Yeah, exactly. So it's gonna be interesting, I think it'll be interesting. No, because I was doing some work out in the app for a while. I know China at one point, someone China had a plan to build a giant 10,000 person resort, which would have been just sort of insane. Looking at it from my point of view, it was being insane. They don't have the water to do it. I was studying water issues they are in there. Yeah, and have the water reserves to support them. Golf courses and things like that. But, no, that's good. I like both your input there on the COFA issues, and I think that's well-reasoned, and I agree. I think there is, the US is not gonna walk away from Micronesia, but there are voices here that we certainly don't wanna continue to give so much aid, so that's gonna have to be worked out, I guess. Anyhow, let's just review again just to wrap things up. The next year's Micronesian Youth Summit is on March 7th, UH campus, and people who are interested can go to the We Are Oceania website and find how to get involved in it, volunteer for it, sign up for it. So all of that information is gonna be on the website. We are oceania.org, so like I said, they just revamped their whole website so it's a lot more user-friendly, and there's a lot of other events that we're doing up there that, for anybody who's interested, we're always looking for volunteers and help. Excellent. Well, thank you so much. I appreciate your coming on and highlighting this recent past event, and we're talking about the options for next year. Carol Ann, Austin, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. And I hope you'll come back and join us for another episode of The Partnerships in Education here on Think Tech Hawaii.