Yapital Robo Day: Hands on Learning in Micronesia

Over 100 students, teachers, and parents convened in Colonia at the Yap Community Center in late May to support student robotic teams from Yap Catholic High School and the Yap SDA School. The inter school robotics league –and its end of the year exhibition–  is the only extracurricular robotics program in the Central Pacific.

The competition began with facilitator Larry Raigetal of  “Waa’gey,” who explained the ground and technical rules of the competition.  Raigetal also provided the audience with background information of the program, now in its second year. He explained how each school provided their student teams with classroom and after school instruction during the course of the school year. The Robo Day event marked a final display of progress and competition, but the goals of the ambitious extracurricular program were being met throughout the last nine months. Both teams had designed and built their robot from an elementary parts kit, honing and improving the robots' performance through trial and error over two semesters.

Carvers in Mentoring Program Proud of New Blades

Students and their mentors in the Waa'gey traditional canoe carving program are giving rave reviews to a set of new tools, provided in part by the US based charity Habele.

Adzes are a traditional tool used for carving or smoothing rough-cut wood in hand woodworking. They are most often used for squaring up logs, or for hollowing out timber. Long ago islanders in the Central Pacific used shell, coral, and sometimes even stones, for the blades of their woodened handled adzes. Today metal blades are fixed to the locally cut and carved handles.

Donated Dictionaries Helping College Bound Chuukese

Students attending Chuuk High School have sent their thanks to Habele for donating English language dictionaries. The US-based charity provided the texts when approached by Vice Principal Jason Reiong.


Reiong wrote to Habele in late 2012, explaining: "I read about your organization in the Kaselehie Press and I was very happy with what your organization has being doing for all the schools across Micronesia. I am writing to ask if your charity could help our students at CHS with some dictionaries, such as those you've provided to students in Yap..."

Over the last several months, Habele volunteers and their partners obtained the dictionaries and sent them to Chuuk. The cost of postage and processing was funded by the European based electronic payments firm "Yapital." On his end, Reiong navigated the donated boxes through customs, the post office and the school system's own bureaucracy. He explains that the timing of the arrival allowed the dictionaries to be used by students preparing for their state and district achievement tests.

"Since the students started using the dictionaries -both in the class and at their homes in the evenings- we've seen the scores on the local assessment increase," Vice Principal Reiong explained in a gracious letter to Habele volunteers. "The higher scores, and the rise in our College of Micronesia (COM) admission rate are possible because of the thoughtful contributions from people like you."

"That is a humbling claim," insisted Alex Sidles, a Habele Director who formerly served as a teacher on Unanu, in the Namonweito Atoll. "I think the real credit goes to the hard working educators and pupils in Weno who've made the most of the dictionaries. We are happy to have helped them do just that."

China's Micronesian Gain is U.S.' Shame

This letter to the editor appeared April 9, 2013, on page A14 of the U.S. edition of the Wall Street Journal.

Regarding Neil Mellen's "A Pacific Island Prefers Chinese Investment to U.S. Welfare" (op-ed, April 2):

Mr. Mellen's focus on Micronesia's economic stagnation is illuminating. But the really alarming aspect of the growing Chinese presence on Yap he mentions only in passing -the Chinese expansion of Yap's seaport and airport. This is more than an economic development; it is potentially a military one. Are we really to be muscled out of the Pacific so easily?

Alex Sidles
Seattle, Washington

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A Pacific Island Prefers Chinese Investment to U.S. Welfare

For decades, American aid did little but promote dependency. Now here comes a Chinese entrepreneur.

This article appeared April 2, 2013, on page A13 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal.

A Micronesian island of about 39 square miles in the western Pacific will in the coming years become a destination for Chinese tourists if a massive resort complex proceeds as planned. The island, called Yap, is part of the Federated States of Micronesia and is strategically located at the crossroads of the Pacific, 500 miles southwest of the major U.S. military bases on Guam.

There are likely to be significant cultural, environmental and economic side effects from the project proposed by Chinese real-estate developer Deng Hong and his Exhibition and Travel Group, or ETG. Certainly a 4,000-room casino-and-golf complex would transform Yap. Yap State, a group of islands with a total population of 11,000, is one of the world's most isolated and traditional societies.

There will also likely be a shift of influence as the Chinese take de facto control over an airport and seaport—both will undergo major improvements for the development—at the heart of a region once termed "the American Pacific." The region is one that the post-World War II Pentagon promised would never again be ceded to foreign influence, as it had been to the Japanese in 1917.

Americans will be tempted to focus on growing Chinese influence in a former U.S. client state and strategic ally. Yet the real lesson is about America's 75-year failure to export one of its greatest assets: free-market capitalism. Since 1945, the U.S. has seemed to direct little more than state socialism to Micronesia and the rest of the American-affiliated Pacific.

Micronesian Schools Plan "Yapital Robo Day"

Educators at the two independent High Schools on the Island of Yap have announced plans for a public exhibition and competition, featuring teams from their student robotics clubs.

The 2013 “Yapital Robo Day,” will highlight the work of robotics teams from both Yap Catholic High School and the SDA School. It will serve as a culmination of the participating students’ hard work throughout the school year. The event will be held on Friday, May 17th at the Community Center in Colonia, starting at 3:00pm. Both schools will demonstrate the capabilities of their robots by navigating the machines through a series of obstacles and retrieving doughnut shaped cargos with the robotic claws.

Club members are looking to show community members, public officials, and their peers the capabilities of the VEX robots each team has built. Parts for the machines were initially donated by the US-based charity “Habele.” Over the course of the school year, the student teams have designed, assembled and programed the robots, turning those piles of raw materials into fully functioning robots.

Mentorship Program Preserves Traditions in Micronesia

In late March, Habele's partner Waa'gey presented to participants in the Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) UNESCO Workshop on Yap. It was an opportunity for the small community based organization to showcase its work across the Caroline Islands.

The workshops were focused on traditional canoe building, navigation, and cultural fishing methods. The presentations were given at the lagoon-side canoe houses where over 30 persons including officials from UNESCO as well as the Federated States of Micronesia's (FSM's) own National Archives participated. Waa'gey volunteers also passed on news of the group's growing network of partners and sponsors as well as its efforts to restore items of historical significance.