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.

Each of the two-student team was given five minutes to operate their robots through the pre-determined game course during two timed rounds. The Yap SDA team won a coin tossing and was given the opportunity to lead off the first round. Both teams were tied at thirteen points after the first round.  Following some readjustments to the robots, the second round was given to Yap Catholic High School to lead off.   The final score for the game was 20 points for Yap Catholic High School and Yap SDA garnering 17 points.

The competition this year brought more excitement to the crowd as the two robots were greatly modified by the teams, allowing them to maneuver and move about the course at higher speeds than last year.  Both teams did exceptionally well in operating their robots. Fr. Michael Corcoran SJ Principal of Yap Catholic High School said he was very happy with the turn out and was most impressed at the improvement made by both robotic teams.  “Last year after the first round, the score was only 1-0” This is a huge improvement he said. Principal Ryan of Yap SDA shared Corcoran’s enthusiasm. Local television and media were also on site to interview the teams and their coaches following the event.

The US based charity “Habele” coordinated the event, with financial support from the European based electronic payments firm “Yapital." The Yap based Waa’gey organization organized the exhibition and served as a liaison to educators and team members throughout the school year. Larry Raigetal of Waa’gey declared the event a major success. “Not only did we see great improvements on the performance of the teams and their modified robots this year, the level of turn out and excitement of those who came only makes us want to work harder for a better event next year!”###


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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.



For years, Waa'gey carvers had to salvage truck springs and other low-grade scrap metal in order to shape the blades. Now, master metalsmith Jim Wester of Waldron Island, Washington is forging high-grade, specialized blades for the group. The partnership was initiated and coordinated by Habele as part of that group's mission to serve K-12 aged students across Micronesia.

"Waa'gey's model of pairing master carvers and weavers with high school aged students is great. They are doing so much to revive and preserve the cultural heritage," said Alex Sidles, a Habele Director. "The efforts also fit perfectly within Habele's mandate to promote academic excellence and access" Sidles continued. "Like the high school robotics teams, this type of extracurricular program really compliments Habele's scholarships and library donations."

The international partnership between canoe carvers in Yap, a small charity in South Carolina and a metalsmith in Washington State has not gone unnoticed. Wester's shop is now offering similarly large and customized blades to other carvers across the world.



"Last year, I sold a few gutter adze irons to some carvers in the remote outer islands of Yap, Micronesia," Jim explains. "But they are building traditional dugout canoes and really want something more aggressive, for two handed work. So they commissioned me to make larger gutter irons, about 3 1/2 inches wide and five times heavier than my normal ones. Not only are they more powerful but also less taxing on the forearm than the single handed adzes."

Learn more about the Waa'gey program here.

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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."

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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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.


The many billions of dollars sent to Micronesia in direct foreign aid was intended to finance the development of economic and political systems across these remote islands and atolls. The Micronesians have instead used the aid to feed a government bureaucracy that mirrors the worst excesses and inefficiencies of the U.S. Department of the Interior, the agency that controls most of the aid.

The sad result is a huge, U.S.-funded Micronesian public sector that crowds out economic development. This has ensured the perpetual dependency of the people, like the Yap islanders, on the state and federal government of the Federated States of Micronesia.

So oppressive is the bureaucracy that the World Bank estimates it takes a year and a half's worth of personal income—spent, for instance, on licensing and attorney fees—to open a small business in Micronesia. In 2013, the bank ranked Micronesia second-worst in the world (behind East Timor) in policies for land registration. The difficulty of recording and holding assets that will be protected under law makes credit virtually unobtainable. The public sector is effectively the sole source of jobs, services, benefits and entitlements—unless Micronesians migrate to Hawaii or Guam (where they are eligible for entitlements on par with native-born U.S. citizens) or enlist in the U.S. military (a career option opened by the "free association" status between the U.S. and Micronesian state governments).


There is no more telling indictment of U.S. policy than the Chinese resort complex planned for Yap. Certain key decision makers publicly justified the deal under the banner of free-market development. Advocates of the plan insist that it is a once-in-a-century opportunity to replace aid dependency with economic development. In short, they are trading in U.S. government handouts—which are scheduled to end in 2023—for the wide-open promise of Chinese-style capitalism.

The U.S. could have spent the past seven decades working with Micronesians to develop modern property rights and an adherence to the rule of law. Washington could have given them the tools to envision and pursue the political and economic future of their own design. Instead the U.S. has devoted itself to keeping the lights on in countless cinder-block government buildings and handing out cheap perishables such as rice and Spam.

The Chinese plan for Yap is not universally popular on the island, where locals still use stone money and dugout canoes. That is particularly true among villagers outside the town center of Colonia, citizens of the more remote municipalities, and peoples from the nearby Outer Islands. Still, the project offers something other than the stagnation and nurtured self-pity of the status quo.

Mr. Mellen was a Peace Corps volunteer in Yap State from 2002-05. He is the president of "Habele," a U.S.-based nonprofit serving kindergarten through 12th-grade-age students across Micronesia.

Copyright 2012 Dow Jones & Company. Read a published response here.


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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.

Last year the two schools participated in the first-ever Yap Robo Day. It was coordinated by local community organization “Waa’gey.” That event, which garnered headlines across the Pacific and earned the recognition of robotics aficionados throughout the US, was Oceania’s first ever student robotics exhibition.


“The feedback on last year’s event was amazing,” explained Neil Mellen, President of Habele. “Our worry was that despite the hard work of the students and enthusiasm of their teachers, we wouldn’t be able to raise the money to buy new parts and stage the Robo Day event again.” Thankfully, the European based electronic payments firm “Yapital” offered to help.


Yapital’s financial support enabled Habele to purchase upgrade kits and spare parts for the robots, as well as shirts for all participating students. They also plan to cover the cost of hosting the Robo Day event itself. “When a delegation from Yapital visited Yap last fall we heard a lot about the Robo Day and just how much it meant to the participating students,” said Nils Winkler, Yapital CEO. “This type of practical application of science and technology instruction is inspiring. We at Yapital are proud to be supporting these hard working students and educators in Yap State.”

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A small American charity is sending ballpoint pens to elementary and high school students on the Island of Yap. Yap is situated in the western Pacific Ocean, just southwest of the US Territory of Guam. The island serves as the capital of Yap State, one of four members of the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM).

One large box of the BIC Grip Roller Pens was sent to each of the three independent schools on Yap: Saint Mary's Elementary School, The SDA School and Yap Catholic High School. Each box contained several hundred of the high quality blue ink pens.

The donation was a gift of Habele, a South Carolina based charity that supports K-12 aged students throughout Yap State and across Micronesia. Habele provides gifts of classroom materials and textbooks to compliment it's tuition scholarship and extracurricular programs.

"Most of our efforts involve building local capacity and supplementing local educators' efforts," explained Habele Director Marc McNamara. "But on occasion we are able to deliver basic supplies upon request and in this instance we are delighted to be doing just that."

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Waa'gey's traditional canoe carving program is changing lives in Micronesia. It provides young islanders with a sense of self, community and their cultural heritage.

Publication of this blog post, by Pacific Voyagers, speaks to a growing awareness of the Habele-supported effort:

"Islanders on these remote [Micronesian] coral atolls have little contact with the outside world and even fewer modern day resources. Now, their complicated and time-honed crafts are being used to pursue a broader social agenda."

"A small group in Yap by the name of “Waa’gey” has begun to pair master carvers, weavers and other skilled mentors with post secondary school aged boys and girls. They hope to support those students’ academic and personal development. The exciting side benefit is the preservation and revival of a distinctive and technically rich tradition of craftsmanship and navigation."


"The process of crafting these complicated vessels is passed on from a handful of elderly experts, one generation to the next. The seemingly tenuous oral link with the past is kept vibrant through practice and observation. Waa’gey sees this as a chance to build bonds between generations and develop a positive work ethic among young islanders, particularly those who now reside in the more dense and developed state centers.

Waa’gey’s approach has been to work with master carvers across the Outer Islands and coordinate projects among teams both on Yap Proper and back on the smaller outer islands where the practices remain more vibrant. In the process they’ve revived a centuries old process of obtaining trees on Yap Proper (where they grow much taller) and exchanging the logs for specialty items only produced in the Outer Islands. That form of tribute and barter stopped when the Japanese ordered an end to the practice of inter-island canoe voyages in the 1920s"

Read the full story here.

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All of Habele’s scholarship recipients have a lot to be proud of, but no one more than 2nd grader Kyle Taitiw.

That’s because Kyle is the only Habele scholarship student reporting a perfect 4.0 GPA on his second-semester report card!

Thanks to excellent instruction from the staff at St. Mary’s School in Yap, and a lot of hard work, Kyle is off to an inspiring start to the school year. Habele’s directors look forward to seeing more great things from Kyle in the future.

Without scholarship assistance from Habele, it is unlikely that Kyle’s academic aptitudes would ever be developed. That’s because Kyle is a native of the tiny undeveloped atoll of Woleai, which lies more than 400 miles east of Yap. There is incredible natural beauty on Woleai, but few opportunities for academic growth.

There are many children on Micronesia’s remote Outer Islands as eager to learn as Kyle, but little – if any – opportunity to cultivate that interest. Thanks to the generosity of our donors, Habele is currently helping twenty-five children from the Outer Islands attend school. That’s a record number of scholarship recipients for Habele, but the need is still great.

Please consider how your generous donation to Habele could open up a new world of learning for another child like Kyle.



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