Service Learning Proposal

Nakupuna Foundation / Jason Greenawalt

Austin Ah Loo

Course Name: CST 361 Service Learning

Instructor name: Dr. Eric Tao

July 2, 2019

1
Austin Ah Loo Service Learning Proposal July 2, 2019
 I. Executive Summary

For the past several years, the Nakupuna Foundation, a Hawaii-based charitable

investment organization, has been striving to assist and provide to the whole of

the Native Hawaiian youth and local community in the forms of financial

donations and personal time and volunteering. Their primary goals are to

establish scholarship funds for aspiring STEM-focused students, implement and

provision job search tools and workshops for the targeted community, and to

build mentorship programs that cements networking relationships, creates

development opportunities, and provides specialized mentors who are committed

to the recipients’ successful transition from student to employee. The service

learner has a deep rooted and passionate connection to the Foundation’s mission

and plight, as he himself grew up in Hawai’i as a youth with Native Hawaiian

heritage, and was afforded such opportunities by family and others in his

community to advance in his education and endeavors. Therefore, the desire to

give back in some modest capacity to the future generations of those same

communities is emphatic and with vigor. The Foundation’s need for an

improvement in their data reporting and analysis satisfies that desire.

Furthermore, as they are growing at an impressive rate in both financial

contributions and applicants for assistance, the service learner’s proposal for a

solution to their current unscalable spreadsheet-based data management system

is the focus of this Service Learning Partnership outcome.

2
Austin Ah Loo Service Learning Proposal July 2, 2019
 II. Service Learner Introduction

○ Name

▪ Austin Ah Loo

○ Contact Info

▪ 28832 Calle De La Paz Dr, Valencia, CA 91354

▪ 818.271.8396

▪ aahloo@csumb.edu

○ School: California State University of Monterey Bay

○ Student Status: Junior

○ Major: Computer Science - Software Engineering

○ Experience: 15+ years within IT industry working in healthcare-related

enterprise application and infrastructure (server and client) support roles

III. Agency Introduction

The service learner is providing his services at Nakupuna Foundation (website:

nakupuna.org), which primarily operates out of both of its main offices in Hawai’I and

Washington DC, but the focus of this partner project and on-site collaboration will be

conducted at the Oahu branch: 3375 Koapaka St. STE B200, Honolulu, HI 96819.

Jason Greenawalt is Vice Chairman and Vice President of the Foundation; his contact

number is (717) 658 – 4221 and email address is jgreenawalt@nakupuna.org, and the

service learner will be working mostly remotely with him during this community

partnership period, due to the geographic circumstances. The Nakupuna Foundation is

a relatively new start-up non-profit that serves as a benefactor to the native Hawaiian

3
Austin Ah Loo Service Learning Proposal July 2, 2019
communities both locally and around the country, in which their financial and volunteer

contributions provide the Hawaiian youth opportunities for educational and

socioeconomic advancement, as well as incentivizing the local businesses seeking to

hire local labor. Nakupuna Foundation’s vision and mission is for a thriving Native

Hawaiian workforce specializing in the realms of science, technology, engineering and

math, to be sought after for their expertise and excellence. The Foundation strives to

support the Hawaiian community through education programs, donations, and

STEM-related learning opportunities.

IV. Community Introduction

The Nakupuna Foundation is one of several non-profit organizations that seek to better

native Hawaiian children and young adults in order to elevate them from their current

economic and social standings. These partners include Purple Mai’a, Pauahi

Foundation, E Ala E Hawaiian Cultural Center, and more. According to an

NHOA-Holomua report in 2017 on the economic conditions of the Native Hawaiian

Community in the State of Hawai’i, one of the three key findings discovered was that in

comparison to the statewide population, Native Hawaiians had the highest

unemployment rate, lowest per capita income, and highest percentage of individuals

living below the poverty level of any other major ethnic group in the entire state.

These facts have helped catalyze a passion and drive for organizations like the

Nakupuna Foundation to assist Native Hawaiians in achieving meaningful and lasting

employment through job search aid, and more importantly by providing them with

4
Austin Ah Loo Service Learning Proposal July 2, 2019
mentorship, training and guidance on how to succeed in business, particularly in the

STEM fields.

Having spoken with Mr. Greenawalt on several occasions, it was learned that the

Foundation to-date has already granted four-year college scholarship awards to several

high school students on the island of Oahu that demonstrated outstanding academic

excellence, while serving his or her local neighborhood with countless hours of

volunteer work and community service. In addition, the organization has provided

many man-hours of its own volunteering at the Malama Loko Ea Fishpond in the North

Shore on Oahu, which is an educational outreach program to allow students of all

backgrounds to practice land stewardship, restoration, and Hawaiian culture. Lastly,

the service learner discovered that Nakupuna Foundation has provided funding support

toward the Purple Mai’a foundation, which teaches and trains underserved Hawaii youth

in computer programming and technology, and currently offers free resume workshops

once a year to all individuals seeking to improve their job placement chances and

opportunities.

With all of the variety of services the organization provides to its surrounding

communities, and with the economic challenge the Native Hawaiian youth and families

are facing, Nakupuna Foundation is a welcome beacon of help and empowerment for

these individuals.

5
Austin Ah Loo Service Learning Proposal July 2, 2019
Project Description

Being a young, small start-up organization, the Nakupuna Foundation currently has

minimal staffing and resources, and only a handful of individuals that manage the

company are supporting a multitude of day-to-day operations, one of which includes

data entry and analysis of the significant stream of candidates and recipients that

come through their charitable donation and scholarship application process.

Thus, the service learner will primarily focus on a proposed solution by the Vice

Chairman that consists of the following:

● Study and practice implementing Qlik and QlikView software and its applications

● Build a management QlikView Dashboard that quickly provides the Foundation

with the ability to view annual charitable spending in a format that aligns with

current reporting requirements

● Use regular reporting from multiple organizations’ general ledgers to aggregate

and consolidate data, using Qlik software as the central business intelligence tool

Due to the nature of the work proposed and the physical location gap between the

service learner and the organization, the majority of the project work will be performed

remotely, and communication and progress updates will be conducted via email and/or

phone. A minimum of 10 hours of on-site work will be scheduled between the two

parties, that is tentatively slated for the dates of July 8 – 11​th​ at the Foundation’s

Honolulu office. The strategy is to engage face-to-face early on in the Project’s timeline

to establish the mutual understanding and vision of the desired outcome. Resources

and access to the requisite tools and software are provided by the organization, and the

6
Austin Ah Loo Service Learning Proposal July 2, 2019
deliverables of the project upon completion will include the aforementioned QlikView

Management Dashboard, and detailed documentation of instruction and procedures for

use by the Foundation’s users, if time permits. The level of success will be evaluated

and determined based on the completeness, functionality, and usability of the final

dashboard and reporting tool product.

7
Austin Ah Loo Service Learning Proposal July 2, 2019