Posted on: Friday, June 14, 2002
Hui Malama job program helps brighten young hopes
By Shayna Coleon
Advertiser Staff Writer
After Teri Palau, who suffers from epilepsy and has a 1-year-old baby, dropped out of McKinley High School last October, the Liliha girl felt her prospects looked bleak.
"I felt like everyone was labeling me 'at risk' and not really seeing who I was and what I could do, because I was missing so much school," said Palau, 18. "My counselors kept referring me to program after program, and those didn't work."
That all changed when a school counselor persuaded her to apply to the Hui Malama Youth Employment Program at the Susannah Wesley Community Center in Kalihi.
"The program really prepares you for employment," Palau said. "As a kid, you don't know anything about getting a job, and here they'll tell you everything you need to know: how to walk, how to talk, and even things like if your dress is too short or your pants are too tight."
Palau is among 109 participants, ages 14 to 21, in the latest round of the free 13-week course that provides low-income and out-of-school young people with job training, leadership development and competency-based high school diploma classes.
"Some of these kids are 16 years old and pregnant, involved with gangs or are in families who are on welfare," said Glen Cadongonan, project coordinator of the Youth Employment Program. "With this program, we try to do what we can for these kids because down the road it definitely will be a benefit to these kids' lives and society as a whole."
The first-year program started after it received $200,000 federal grant from the O'ahu Workforce Investment Board last October, said Brian Tamamoto, managing director of Human Resources Solution Inc. and a teacher for the program's work force development classes.
The grant became available after the state Department of Labor and Industrial Relations handed $3.7 million to the O'ahu Workforce Investment Board.
The program — a joint project of Parents and Children Together, Hale Kipa Inc., KEY Project, Human Resources Solutions Inc. and the Susannah Wesley Community Center — also prepares the students for entering the work force by setting up simulated interviews with local companies and career shadowing.
Palau, who said she had long had an interest in law, said the program allowed her to accompany a lawyer at a domestic violence center for a week in May as part of the Hui Malama Employment Program.
Palau said she now plans to attend Honolulu Community College, majoring in family law.
"For the first time in my life, I actually saw my future and I saw a lot of success," Palau said. "I think I always had the motivation, but I just needed that guidance. I needed that little nudge from someone who said, 'You can do it.'"
Reach Shayna Coleon at 525-8004 or scoleon@honoluluadvertiser.com.
