Foundation reduces staff

Advertiser Staff

Honolulu nonprofit institution Ohana Foundation has laid off about eight of its 120 workers, citing production bottlenecks and delays in getting its educational DVD products ready for market.

The cuts come as Ohana Foundation tries to produce about 250 educational DVDs, or digital video discs, for use in North American classrooms. The DVDs serve as educational videos and are equipped with links to relevant Internet sites.

Ohana's goal was to get its collection ready by the end of June, and then to begin mass-marketing the DVDs and their players to schools nationwide, said Alan Pollock, the foundation's director of marketing. But the foundation, which hired dozens of workers in Hawai'i in the past year, found it had overhired for its curriculum-writing department, Pollock said.