A University of Hawaiʻi Community Colleges program that offers free skills training for in-demand jobs in Hawaiʻi, which began at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, received a $500,000 boost from Ascendium Education Group.
The Good Jobs Hawaiʻi program, which started out as Hana Career Pathways, offers free skills training for such high-demand sectors as health care, technology, clean energy, skilled trades and creative industries through non-credit courses at UH Community Colleges.
The program was initially seeded with a grant from the federal government’s American Rescue Plan Act and further supported by Ascendium’s $500,000 gift.
But Ascendium provided more than funding, said Joshua Kaakua, academic program officer at the University of Hawaiʻi System Office of the Vice President for Community Colleges. The company, whose philanthropic mission is to fund initiatives that help students from low-income backgrounds attain the skills they need to achieve upward mobility, improved the programs for students and employers.
One of the program’s key successes came from its ability to focus on health care as a job sector and determine the workforce needs for entry-level jobs such as nursing assistants.
Ascendium took this a step further by creating a nursing career pathway map to help students see the opportunities to gain more skills for higher-paying jobs such as licensed practical nurse or registered nurse.
Ascendium also asked UH to look at training for medical assistants, another high-demand job, Kaakua said.
“The other key thing they brought to us is they challenged UH to include student voices in the program,” he said. “Part of our work with them involved conducting surveys of current and potential students, including past participants.”
Ascendium’s support for the Good Jobs Hawaiʻi program has also challenged UH to think differently about workforce training. The program will continue to offer courses through funding from the federal government and the City and County of Honolulu.
“It’s really caused a shift in how the university should serve the community,” Kaakua said.
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