LIHU‘E — Nonprofit Dev-Island was designed to help Kaua‘i workers gain the skills necessary to secure local and remote-technology jobs and enable them to stay on the island and use skills to document local histories.
“If nothing else, we (want to) create an opportunity for people that doesn’t exist today,” said President and Founder Rich Uhl. “Individuals who then keep their families here, they keep the culture, they keep their history, they bring this richness that is currently being exported to the mainland.”
Dev-Island is starting out small with a cohort of about five students this spring through a no-cost program. The second cohort will be larger and begin in September. They are currently looking for applicants for the computer-coding cohort.
“One of the primary indicators that we’re looking for is drive, you know, tenacity, something to help you work toward it,” said Uhl. “And that also requires family support to be able to accomplish this, because it is not going to be an easy program.”
Uhl has been working on getting Dev-Island off the ground for about a year.
When Uhl moved to Kaua‘i with his family in 2020, he and his wife knew they wanted to contribute to their new community. “We kept going back and forth (asking) what do we have? What can we do?” Uhl said.
They decided that they could contribute the most by using Uhl’s background in technology and by contributing some starter funding to get a project going. The pandemic helped determine the direction of the project. For most of 2020, unemployment was rampant, with tourism at a near shut down due to pandemic restrictions.
Uhl, who worked remotely for Amazon Webservices, watched how the jobs shifted away from California’s Bay Area to remote work, and saw opportunity here. “I think we’re in a really sweet spot to be able to capture on that remote work in Kaua‘i,” Uhl said. “The challenge is getting it from just people that have these jobs that are moving here to individuals that live here, capturing on the opportunity of those jobs. Education is the is the bridge that makes it possible.”
• Info: dev-island.org, or Danielle@dev-island.org
