Herman Hu ‘48 "A Major Service Project By SLAA"

In the neighboring Palolo Valley is situated a public housing complex of over 400 units where about 1300 Southeast Asian and Pacific Island immigrants and other low-income residents live. Nearly 28% of the housing families are subsisting on incomes that are 50% below the poverty level. About 95% of the children attending the adjoining Palolo Elementary School are on federally subsidized lunch programs. And close to 85% of the 3rd and 5th graders are scoring less than the State average in math and reading.

Since 1985, a non-profit organization called The Mutual Assistance Associations Center (MAAC) has been helping immigrants and low-income families to secure a better, and more productive life here in Hawaii. An outgrowth of Catholic Charities, MAAC performs its mission by offering numerous tutoring programs for students, youths, and adults using volunteer mentors from the community, and nearby high schools, and colleges. In addition, it provides free after-school computer training and use for all students to do their homework, learn new knowledge, and enhance their technical skills, and for adults and parents to further their own education and careers and to seek new information and knowledge via the Internet.

Now housed on the second floor of the Palolo District Park building, MAAC offers a safe and user-friendly environment for the residents, not only to study and learn, but also to meet, socialize, and participate in recreational activities. MAAC is run by a part-time director, Ms. Pathana Rattanasamay, MSW, herself an immigrant from Laos.

Its computer-learning laboratory has about 15 computers that the students and residents can use daily. The computers are, however, much less than the present state of art and lack the features and capabilities required in today’s learning environment. Being a non-profit organization dependent entirely upon grants and donations, it does not have the funds to upgrade its facilities or to purchase new equipment. MAAC does the best with what it has, but wants to acquire modern equipment to help achieve its mission more efficiently and effectively.

On a separate track, unaware of the existence of MAAC, the St. Louis Class of ’48 began the year 2000 looking for a project to celebrate its 55th graduation anniversary, which will occur this year. At that time, it was felt that we, the steering committee, needed to do something substantial, meaningful, and lasting that would bond our ’48 classmates together, bond our class with the alumni and the school, and bond us with our community. After searching for nearly two years, we settled upon a computer-recycling project. This exciting project involves accepting donations of used computers (which otherwise would be thrown away) from individuals and businesses, repairing and upgrading the serviceable ones, and giving the newly refurbished computers to needy families in the community, to schools, or to non-profit organizations.

Saint Louis School (SLS) was approached to collaborate on this project, but it couldn’t participate because of the lack of space on campus due to expansion of the grade school and its concentration on building new computers for current and new emerging school demands.

We had spent much time and energy looking for workshop space and an organization that wanted to participate in our computer-recycling project, until a friend heard about our project at a Republican Party meeting. This friend arranged and expedited the introduction of MAAC to SLS ’48 because he saw that the needs and goals of both parties could easily be attained by both organizations working together. By agreeing to collaborate with MAAC, SLS ’48 found itself deeply involved in a new community service project with a worthy cause.

Our computer-recycling project will be staffed primarily by volunteers. The first set of volunteers will consist of 20 men and women who are willing to step forward as pioneers to tackle this innovative service project and to contribute $400 to attend a computer-recycling training course to be taught at MAAC in Palolo Valley during the week of Oct. 26 by the Lazarus Foundation of Columbia, Maryland. They will also be asked to give a little back to the community by offering their time, wisdom, and newly acquired technical skills and knowledge to provide hands-on training to succeeding sets of volunteers, who will come principally from the housing complex.

We are using this means to offer the St. Louis alumni and spouses the challenge to participate in this major community service project sponsored by the St. Louis Alumni Association (SLAA). Please join and help us by signing up for the 5-day training program starting Oct. 27, 2003. Call or email the following to reserve a seat:
Herman Hu: 988-4040 or Hhu77@aol.com, or
Bobby Hutchison: 263-4750 or campkupuna@earthlink.net

Call early because only 12 seats are available. If you can’t join the training program, but would like to make a tax deductible donation to help our project, write a check to MAAC, which is a 501©3 organization, and send it to Herman Hu, 3565 Pinao St. Honolulu, HI 96822.

A similar training program at Leeward Community College costs twice the $400. Lazarus has successfully trained over 200 students and over 800 elderhostelers (men and women over 55 years old) during the last ten years.

Volunteers completing the Lazarus training will have the confidence and be able to:
• Install a new motherboard or CPU chip
• Add memory
• Install a new power supply
• Add or replace a hard drive
• Install a CD-ROM drive, a DVD drive, a Tape drive, Sound card and speakers, a USB device, a modem, a home network, and,
• Perform any other work inside a computer.

You will also be able to use the Palolo workshop to sharpen your newly acquired technical skills, to give hands-on training and mentoring to new volunteers, and to help refurbish computers for donation to needy families, first to those living in Palolo Valley and later to others in the State.

Student and adult volunteers from the housing complex, who are trained by SLAA volunteers in our new technology center, will be able to use this valuable hands-on experience to determine which career path they would like to pursue – employment in high paying technical jobs, further vocational training and technical certification for still higher paying jobs, or obtaining college degrees in engineering, computer science, or another technical field. Trained students can also use this practical experience to obtain part time or summer work to help finance their post-secondary education.

Bob Hutchison ’48 donating computer to Ms. Pathana Rattanasamay, Executive Director, MAAC

Milton Hutchison at the Tech Center

You can see that our recycling service project will have an important impact to open up these new opportunities for the housing people to use to realize a better life in Hawaii.

These people and over 60 used computers now await our recycling initiative in Palolo Valley. Come and help us!

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