A letter from the Habele Board President to donors and volunteers:

This has been a great year for Habele, and now we need your help in keeping our commitments to the ambitious students of Micronesia.

Since January, we’ve delivered dozens of boxes of dictionaries to students throughout Yap and Chuuk States. We’ve also provided specialized adze blades to master carvers in the Waa’gey canoe carving mentor program. Most exciting, we’ve partnered with schools in Yap to orchestrate our second annual high school robotics competition.

Now we are looking toward August 1st, when Habele announces its 2013-2014 Student Scholarships – and we need your help!

These scholarships offer students from remote islands and low-income families equal access to the quality instruction provided by Micronesia’s most effective independent schools.

Habele’s K-12 student scholarships serve a locally defined need. They raise community expectations of the power and utility of formal education. The scholarships are a targeted, transparent, and effective form of support for the most challenged segment of Micronesia’s population: students.

There are 24 Habele scholarships from the 2012-13 school year that we hope to renew (a 25th, is set to graduate high school!) There are dozens more additional applicants this year, some having applied each summer for several years.  The need far exceeds our ability to meet it, but at a minimum we are determined to keep our existing students who’ve met their report card goals enrolled next year. Average tuition at the schools where Habele scholars attend is just over $550 next year. In addition to the scholarship renewals, our hope is to provide further awards to the most deserving of the new applicants.

Please, consider making a donation to Habele today. Remember, we are an all-volunteer charity, with no paid employees. We are also an IRS-recognized nonprofit, so you may be eligible for a tax deduction.

Thank you for your support, -NM


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Shipments of cultural studies and art history books are headed to the Republic of Palau.

The donation, made by Habele, consists of copies of "Micronesian Arts and Crafts," "The Art of Micronesia," and a the newly released "Painting Palau's History." Each is authored by the esteem anthropologist and regional expert Barbara Wavell.

The books are headed to the Historic Preservation Office (HPO), the Palau National Museum, as well as public libraries. The hope is that both experts and lay readers alike will have easy access to the texts.


The newly published "Painting Palau's History" tells the story of Charles Gibbons. One of Palau's most famous artists, Gibbon's life spanned three Colonial administrations and saw many changes in Palauan society. His memories, expressed through his detailed and meticulous water color images of the past preserve cultural traditions and provide a valuable record of those early days. This work explores his life and art. Filled with vivid color illustrations, the book is visually striking and certain to be of interest to native readers in Palau.

"We've found that books dealing with regional topics are in high demand across the Central Pacific," says Neil Mellen, a Habele Director. "Anything we can do to develop an interest in reading among younger students -and sustain and indulge that interest among older community members- is great. Our experience is that books about the islands themselves often work best."

Habele is a US based nonprofit that has been supporting students across Micronesia since 2006. The charity's private school tuition scholarships, targeted literacy donations and innovative after school programs are designed to promore both educational access and accomplishment.

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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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