Community Economic Development

On the Big Island of Hawaii, after 100 years of operation, yet another sugar cane plantation was being shut down in order to find a cheaper labor force overseas. Employees and their families faced the end of their jobs as well as the elimination of company-supplied housing and health care. The Hawaii Department of Health invited RQP staff to help residents learn skills to advocate for themselves and navigate the various systems they would soon be dealing with. Soon, residents of the plantations were focusing on these key decisions: the allocation of job training funds, determination of land use of the sugar cane fields, provision of health care, and assignment of former company-owned housing. One resident reported:

Now when I go to meetings where people are making decisions that really affect my family I don't have to just sit there, not knowing what to say. I think about what I want to know and what I need to know and then I ask the question. What a difference!

At the other end of the United States, in New Bedford, Massachusetts, local residents faced economic crisis, this time in the fishing industry. Community organizations in New Bedford, Massachusetts used training by RQP to prepare a "community questioning" process that put pressure on local, state and federal decision-making bodies to address the employment, job training and educational needs of New Bedford residents hurt by the economic changes.