The first seed was planted two years ago. Back then, Solomon Alfapada was getting into fights, skipping school and teetering on the edge of failure in Wai'anae.

But this week, 18-year-old Alfapada and four of his best friends from the state-of-the-art Searider Productions program at Wai'anae High School are packing their bags and heading for college at the Art Institute of California in Santa Monica for a bright future in digital media production.

"Being in this program has really turned my future around," says Alfapada, who saved money for college and won several scholarships, as did his friends. "I really didn't know where I was going after I graduated. Now I see there are a lot of things out there for me. I can do anything I put my mind to."

Two years ago a $400,000 HUD grant helped Wai'anae High turn a storage building into a digital arts studio.

And 400 students have been trained in production, with some of them going on to earn a living from what they've learned, or moving on for further training.

The $4.7 million in new grants to Hawai'i public colleges aims to make the same kind of difference in other poor or predominantly Native Hawaiian communities, where teens have little to do and there seems to be no way out.

It's a climate in which drug use is all too common and failure can become a way of life.

"For a lot of our kids growing up not having much, college is not an option," said Candy Suiso, the program director who has watched one after another of her students blossom because of Searider Productions.

"The amazing thing is college now becomes a possibility for them. They want to go on to learn more."

That's part of the hope for children who will be affected by projects to be financed by the six new HUD grants that go to Native Hawaiian and low-income programs from rural Kea'au on the Big Island to a Hawaiian Homestead area on Kaua'i.

Kamuela Chun, director of the Native Hawaiian community-based education learning centers at UH, said the new money is a vital link between the university and the Hawaiian community.

"It helps provide resources they normally wouldn't have access to," said Chun, a past chairman of the Native Hawaiian Education Council, a group committed to improving education for Native Hawaiians.

One grant, to build a recording studio, commercial kitchen and a multimedia digital arts lab in the Kea'au Youth Business Center will focus money and attention on the state's most at-risk population, those living in the Puna district of the Big Island, and offer young people job training in areas of their highest interest.

According to recent statistics 48 percent of the Puna population lives below the federal poverty level of $400 per month for a single person. Unemployment stands at more than 11 percent compared with 3.3 percent for the state overall.

"I think this will help prepare them, definitely, for a community college and give them some of the skills and get them fired up again," said Stephanie Launiu, executive director of the Big Island's Bay Clinics, one of the partners in the grant along with Hawai'i Community College.

"We see a lot of dropouts statewide, so we're opening up an option for kids to teach them how to create their own businesses, and their own income."

Statistics from the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems show that only 64 percent of Hawai'i high school students graduate on time. The center says 38 percent go directly to college; only 22 percent are still enrolled by their sophomore year; and only 13 percent graduate.

That's one of the country's lowest college graduation rates.

For the Kea'au project, eight students from the Lanakila Learning Center alternative school were part of the planning committee, and it's their ideas that are being put into effect with some of the new HUD money.

"We told them it couldn't be a traditional center where you have a pingpong table and a pool table," said Kalani Kahalioumi, community resource specialist for the Bay Clinic program. "We said they had to think out of the box and they picked these opportunities because they found they could generate profit from these areas."

Part-time jobs for high school students are a particular rarity in the Puna area where Kea'au is located. But when the youth center is complete by December, it will offer students, dropouts, community people and anyone else who can come up with a business plan, the opportunity to create their own future.

Students will get a new set of skills plus high school credits.

"The center will be a pathway to Hawai'i Community College programs," said Trina Nahm-Mijo, a professor at HCC who was one of the team of grant writers.

"It's the same kind of concept as the Searider program, to give hope back to the community."

That's exactly what has happened in Wai'anae, and with the young people who have been touched by the Searider program.

Brent Holt, who is also headed for the Art Institute of California, said he always dreamed of being a movie producer or director, but had no idea how to make it happen. He probably never would have gone to college if he hadn't been part of the digital media program.

Without that, he said, he's sure his dreams would have been lost.

Samuel Kapoi knows that, too. The program gave him aspirations, but they're also aspirations his grandparents helped build as they raised him when his parents were unable to.

On the day Kapoi graduated from Wai'anae High this summer, he stood next to his grandfather's bed in the family living room. Jerome Kapoi had been ailing for a year, but the family brought him home from the hospital to be close in his last weeks.

"I got dressed up and took pictures with him," said Sam. "He had cancer and he had a stroke. Even though he couldn't respond back, he could still hear."

A few hours later, Jerome Kapoi died.

Kapoi knows his grandfather was proud of him going to college.