One 101 agenda item number one is roll call.
Katie, thank you for being here Katie Chang. Present. Robert, I believe he's excused today, and then
virtually Nikki Medwetz. Present. and Christie-Ann Nishita, present. Excellent. Thank you everyone for being here, parks and rec crew is here. Mahalo for the service that you provide for our community. It's just wonderful to see so
many faces here in the audience today. Hearing that all members are present, we will proceed with a few housekeeping ite
ms. Members of the public will be allowed to provide oral testimony on all
items on the Agenda in two ways: remotely and in-person at the Mission Memorial Auditorium.
Remote and in-person oral testimony will be allowed during items number four as listed on the
agenda. Before testifying, each person shall state their name. Each speaker may not have anyone
else read their statement and is limited to a three-minute presentation on each item. When your
name is called, please monitor your screen
and activate your audio feed when prompted. I will then give the
persons who have not registered an opportunity to offer testimony. Please utilize the raise hand
feature in Zoom to be called on. Once all the remote testifiers have testified, I will proceed to
in-person testimony in the Mission Memorial Auditorium. Persons who have not registered will
be given an opportunity to speak following the oral testimonies of the registered speakers.
Written testimonies, including the testifierʻs ad
dress, email address and phone number, will
be available to the public as described on the posted agenda. As a courtesy, please turn off all cell phones. Agenda item number two:
Members, agenda item number one is a presentation by DPR which provides
an overview of structure on the division of Park Maintenance and Recreation
Services (PMRS) - Recreation Service Section and a presentation on DPRʻs summer fun program,
including highlights from the Summer Fun Program Dashboard. Phew, thatʻs a l
ot. Do I have to do that every meeting? This is my first rodeo everybody, if you havenʻt figured that out. So itʻs an honor to be here. This is my first meeting. So without any further Ado, deputy director you have a presentation? Sorry I like to hold the microphone. Good
afternoon, Aloha Chair Houser as well as the program committee. My name is Marc Koga, I'm
the recreation supervisor for district one which is shown here as well as in the handouts that
you have. District one ranges from The
Parks, from Sandy Beach all the way to McCully District Park. Hi, my name is Ina Higashi-Izumi. I'm from District 2, and we run from Makiki to Aiea. Aloha Iʻm Mana Kahaleoumi. Iʻm representing District 3, we go from Makaha to Waipahu. Hi good afternoon, I'm Kelsey Takahashi Iʻm with District 4 my area goes from Makapuu, up the Winward Coast
through the North Shore all the way to Mokuleia. Aloha, I'm Napua Cayetano. Iʻm with District 5 Central Oahu from Pearlridge to Wahiawa. So we are pleased t
o be here today to
talk to you all about the largest youth summer program on the island of its kind, the
Department of Parks and Recreation Summer Fun Program. Before we begin, I wanted to
just show you some organizational structure of our department just to give you an idea of
who we are and where we fall in the big scheme of things. So this organizational structure
is our department um under the office of the Director, there are three different divisions.
The Division of Urban Forestry,
the Executive Services Division, and the Parks and Maintenance
and Recreation Services or PMRS and that's where we fall. Within the PMRS division we have our
administrator, as well as assistant administrator. There are five different districts, as
well as the Recreation Support Services, and Maintenance Support Services. In each of
the districts there is a district manager who's in charge of the recreation as well as the
maintenance in the district there's the recreation supervisors followe
d by complex supervisors and
then the actual summer fun directors themselves. So the five of us here are all in that Recreation
supervisor block. So chair Houser we wanted to conduct today's meeting in three different parts. The first part being summer fun general info followed by the DPR program outcomes for our participants. Then
followed by the goals and opportunities for summer 2024. We would like to have a brief five minute
Q&A between each session if that's okay and at the conclusion o
f the presentation go through a
big discussion. Is that okay with you folks? Awesome. Thank you so let's begin, Ina and I are going to
be going over some summer fun general info. So this is Ina. Thank you Marc, good afternoon Parks Board. So I
will be going over General summer fun information so the who what when where why and how. So first of
all what is summer Fun. In your folders there's a handout of the history of how summer fun came
to be, a brief summary. Summer fun began on O'ahu in
1944 in response to the Community need for
positive keiki engagement during World War II. The City started with 26 sites and now has turned
into over 55 locations island-wide. The program with this 8:30 to 2pm time frame was made to
mimic a typical school day to keep parents and children's on a consistent schedule. Even though
it mimics a typical school day the emphasis is on Recreation, so now back to what is summer fun.
Summer fun is a city operated Recreation based summer program where ch
ildren are engaged in
a variety of activities, experiences that promote physical emotional and social well-being
and development. Keiki get to participate in a variety of sports and games Music and Dance Arts
and Crafts Hawaiiana drama excursions and much more. Our staff create programs that are outcome based where
participants develop soft skills which include but are not limited to: teamwork problem solving
communication adaptability and interpersonal skills. These skills are learned thro
ugh engaging
group dynamics participation and Cooperative games and friendly competition. Summer fun creates
a unique experience for our participants because they are integrated with other Keiki who are
different ages, go to different schools, who come from different social economic backgrounds
and who have varied physical abilities. Because Summer fun is not separated by academic skill
like school, it gives an opportunity for any child to be the star. It is important for us to contribute t
o the development of the whole child. So who is who in summer fun? So here's an
organization chart of our summer staff and participants. So summer fun director is the
main coordinator of the summer fun program, they oversee and set
the program outcomes. The summer fun director plans organizes develops and directs the program.
That includes excursions special activities and events such as finale program in addition they
also provide training and give guidance to adult leaders and Leadership
lesson Planning Group
control and many other skills to keep them successful. Our adult leaders are full-time
contract workers for the summer who range from being college students young adults and teachers
who are on break. They are responsible for developing lesson plans for daily activities
for children and also conduct and Lead various activities that they have planned. So these are
not limited to but Sports and games arts and crafts music and dance creative drama Hawaiiana home work acti
vities large group games and special events. They are each responsible for a group of up to 25
keiki and a few junior leaders. In addition adult leaders also keep statistics by taking role
daily help with general cleaning and Mentor Junior leaders and prepare evaluation reports.
Junior leaders are teenage participants who are 13 to 17 years old that volunteer to assist with
Summer fun program. They assist the adult leaders in running program by helping monitor
children help run activities p
lanned by the adult leaders serve food for summer food service
program and help with daily general cleaning of the facility. We use this program to Mentor our
teenage participants to gain work experience to make them employable when they decide to join
the workforce. Areas have a screening and or have an interview process that helps them prepare
with their interview skills. Then our summer fun children come along and there are six to 13
year olds that usually live in the surrounded communit
ies but are not limited to the area that they live in. Children must be 6 years old before August 1st of the current calendar year and not older than
13 years old by the end of the current program period. So the next hand-out in your folder is a breakdown of Summer fun sites with the maximum capacity for each program based on facilities and then what was actually registered for the years
2019 and 2023. Up here listed is our numbers of children participants Junior leaders
and adult leaders for
2019 and 2023. So due to covid we saw a 13% decrease in children
participants and a 21% drop in junior leaders registered. So in 2023 we needed 402 adult
leaders to be able to fully staff all summer fun programs to capacity. We were able to hire
351 adult leaders so we were still short 51 staff. These are our Title One areas so out
of the 53 programs island-wide 35 of those sites qualified as Title One areas. So the
breakdown is in District Two or sorry two in District One East Honolulu, 1
1 in District
Two West Honolulu, 12 in District 3 Leeward O'ahu, eight in District Four Winward and North
O'ahu and two in District five central O'ahu. So when is summer fun this year? So this
year summer fun will run from June 10th to July 26th the program will be seven weeks long
and a total of 33 days. Summer fun runs Monday through Friday 8:30 a.m. to 2 o'clock P.M some
areas may have different hours to meet the needs of the Community. General supervision is from
8:00 a.m. to 8:30 a.m.
in the morning and from 2:00 p.m to 4:00 p.m. in the afternoon. General
supervision is when a staff person is on duty but not directly responsible for conducting organized
activities. This would be supervising play at the playground or facility by enforcing rules and
regulations of the park. Some areas have summer plus program, which is a supplemental program to provide additional hours of child care before and after summer fun program. So before care runs from 6:00 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. and aft
er care runs from 2: to 5:30 p.m. I will give it back to Marc. Thank you Ina. So I know you must be wondering where we got all this data from. So all of the data that's going to be presented in today's presentation is actually from our
summer fun survey information gathering that we did. The results of which is all inside of
your handouts that you can refer to later on if you want to and hopefully that information will
all be in our dashboard that we are in development with. So the next quest
ion is where is summer fun?
Well that's the beauty of this program because it's in 53 communities all around the island last
year we had 53 programs island-wide and our goal for 2024 is to have 59 programs island-wide. The
amenities in each of the sites vary but most have multi-purpose rooms Fields Outdoor courts
which includes basketball and volleyball courts and some do also include gymnasiums pools and
playground equipment. Of the sites that reported in our survey that we sent out of the
59 sites for
2024 41% of those sites are actually going to be utilizing the Department of Education facilities, so we rely heavily with that. How do we do summer fun? The summer fun directors are the master minds behind the programs and are the ones who design everything. Immediately after the
program is complete they begin to plan the next year's program including Excursion sites and
overall program design. Summer fun directors plan what is best for the communities that they
are in. As Ina
already mentioned some communities needed additional care after the regular summer
school day and there are also programs that are designed to not meet the traditional summer
fun program model. Summer fun directors have the ability to schedule activities with costs
totaling up to $100 maximum along with the $25 registration fee which is waved for qualifying
individuals from the Department of Human Services. Our Title One areas do qualify for summer food
service program and fiscal recovery
funds to subsidize activity costs. So why choose summer
fun? Well for the child participant we offer a fun and memorable experience that they'll never
forget. For the adults we provide supervision for their children in the neighborhood and we are the
best deal in town seven weeks for only $125. For junior leaders and teens we hope that they find
this to be a very rewarding and skill-building experience and for our adult leaders it's a chance
to work close to home and in the communities and
give back to the communities that they're from.
Why do we do summer fun? It's a chance to be a positive impact for so many. You know one of
my favorite memories in summer fun is watching everybody grow up. I've had kindergarteners who
are now growing up and now they're staff for the kindergarteners and now I even have my own staff
becoming directors like myself so it's a really great cycle to see. So now that you've heard about
us we want to hear a little bit about you guys if you have any
questions we also are interested
in knowing about how you do you what may be some of your success stories and if you see any things that can complement our program with yours. Well first of all thank you for the presentation the PowerPoint looks great. I love your vibe. I know that's not a super professional way of saying it but really love the energy and what you bring to our youth so just a few questions I mean I think as we're getting to know all the programs something that we're probably go
ing to be asking quite a bit is what are you most
excited about what are you most worried about because it kind of gives us a frame for you
know Direction and how we can best support So how how do you think you would answer those
two questions? Definitely for me personally, what I'm the most excited about is the
people connections I think that all of us have with our program participants. It's those
personal connections that I think make this job not a job you know it's you're part of the
community you're contributing. Your second question about: what am I most worried about? I think that I'm the most worried about staying relevant I think like for myself and my staff I always want to be relevant or Cutting Edge or
you know keeping up with the times and trying to see where best we can you know grow and
be this you know 100 year program that keeps on going and then one more question so for the
9,000 that were served pre pandemic is the goal to get back there I imagine staff is
a
limitation but or is it more of a facilities I think last year definitely the years after
covid Staffing is definitely an issue you'll see that I think more in the presentation
where we talk about some of the challenges with that and (inaudible) oh the goal is 10,000 yeah so the 59 sites is
what we're forecasting to have this year then that's pending Staffing is wonderful
and if we do hit the 59 sites full cap full everybody that would total I think
it was 10,075 children (inaudible) we'
re hoping we're hoping for it but we need
some help with that and hopefully we can get there great and I also want to give our
board members that virtual an opportunity to give feedback about the presentation as well I would love to give feedback as a mom who slept overnight in the rain to sign my
children up for Manoa summer fun to value and hi Mark again I don't know if you remember me
kids went to Summer fun at Manoa for a few years and what I appreciated most about the program was the in
tergenerational aspect. I work at UH at the center on aging and so I'm a big fan of bringing kūpuna and keiki together and I remember my kids talking about a few
activities that they did with kūpuna and I thought that was fantastic and also from
someone who is at UH I appreciated the fact that the adult leaders as I remember a lot
of them were students at the College of Ed so this was great experience for them as future
teachers and I'm wondering if there's anything there to Foster in terms
of becoming more of a
pathway opportunity for these students and future teachers you know some kind of pathway or
opportunities for these students to earn you know credit hours um just be a part of that you
know College of Education teacher prep kind of programs. Yeah that was that's just my
initial thoughts thank you. Yeah thank you for that comment to touch on what Christie
said in the start at Manoa I started a program which was kūpuna corner and it utilized the senior
Club at Manoa and
as a free play option the kids would come and they would learn these like long
time ago crafts and things. but yeah that program is still going today so I'm really happy that you brought that up. To address your other concern yes, we are trying to develop new ways of reaching out
to the University of Hawaii Depart school of Ed kinesiology famar and sociology. My fellow colleagues and I are planning to visit as many places as we can go and spread the good word about our programs and you know r
ight now it's kind of a Grassroots we're
trying to contact those who we know and we are looking at that as a means of getting more
staff and getting to reach the goals that we want. Fantastic thank you hi everyone it's Nikki
Medwetz, I just wanted to chime in and I'm not a mom but I work with a lot of young families at
Aulani and I just hear really great things from all of those families about the popularity of
this program and just how highly they think of it. So one I just want to commend
you all
for the great work that that you do on this program and for keeping it so successful. I
think there's almost a problem with the success of it though you know like I'd love to see us being able to expand it to offer more access to it. Especially you
know I hear from Westside families that you just like you mentioned you know that
this is the best deal on the on the whole entire Island and child care being such a huge expense for our families on the island it sounds like making this m
ore accessible to our
local families it means that we need to be able to hire more people into these roles so I'd love
to just kind of explore a little bit more about the challenges that you're having maybe in hiring the right people for these roles and so that we can expand the access of this to
more people. Thank you yes we're definitely going to be covering that so maybe that's a great Segway now we can go on to our next section. So our next section is the DPR program outcomes and Kelsey T
akahashi will be presenting about it. Hi good afternoon my name is Kelsey
Takahashi and I'll be sharing a recreation refresh and program outcomes. While our parks and facilities are really the footprints in our communities the heartbeat of our department
are our staff our programs and our activities. The department has always prided ourselves on
providing affordable and accessible recreation activities and events for all ages. For years we've
offered recreation activities such as youth sport
s leagues Ceramics archery swim classes to our
cherish summer fun program. To stay relevant innovative and rise up to higher standards
in 2022 the department decided to develop the recreation refresh plan. Members you can check
your flyers in your folder if you would like to follow along with the full plan. The recreation
refresh plan includes a new mission and vision statement standardized program outcomes and
is our unified approach to outcomes based programming. This plan aligns all of o
ur programs
and events to division wide standards and outcomes to promote higher program quality these outcomes
help staff to be intentional and purposeful about what they teach and how they conduct their
activities and events. The recreation refresh plan includes three program outcomes health
and wellness sense of place in community and Leadership. For health and wellness we want
to increase habits that support healthy minds bodies hearts and spirits. We want participants to
engage in hea
lthy habits finesses and behaviors to engage in positive social interactions and to
promote Wellness in others. We may have always been providing Sports and cooking activities but we're
not just teaching the kids how to dribble the ball or cook fried rice but rather we're teaching
them the importance of team work or the desirable heart rate when doing a cardio activity to how
many ounces of water they should be drinking in a day and how to build a well balanced meal
with the five major food
groups we create our activities to be a safe place for individual
Discovery creativity and where every child has a chance to be a star. We offer opportunities
for dramatic play singing and dancing different forms of art media all with the goal of giving our keiki unique Recreation experiences in a safe and welcoming environment. Our programs and activities
are not academic based curriculum but staff strive to incorporate a variety of experiences. For
the participants many sites will include
visits to the library or the mobile bookmobile visits with
the Hawaiian Humane Society to learn how to care for animals or presentations on cleaning the
beaches of microplastics or participating in the Genki Alawai project. Our playgrounds are our
classrooms and we understand how we contribute to building the whole child. We want to create
opportunities for the keiki to learn and refine important skills like teamwork sharing taking
turns communicating and playing with people of different a
ge. The participants come to our
programs to learn specific activities but they leave learning and experiencing so much more. Our second program outcome is sense of place in community. We want to increase connections to the
home park and Community. We want our participants to know about the place that they live and
the place that they recreate and program at. We want them to know the host and Community
cultures to learn the stories the language the culture and practices and we want them to h
elp
to take care of their home their park and their Community. During summer fun we see this happen
when the keikis start to develop group and park Pride you hear them chanting their group names
or singing their park songs or how lunch ends with a cleanup because we instill the importance
of taking care of the spaces that they use and how to leave that space better than when they found
them. We want our programs to be safe places for our participants and we strive to create a culture
of ac
ceptance and understanding. We also pride ourselves and making our programs and activities
accessible to all. If there are participants with different abilities or needs then we strive to
make the necessary accommodations so they can stay included with their peers to have the same
experience to the greatest extent possible and by keeping these participants included with the
group we can then provide learning opportunities for all of the participants and it's amazing
to see how the keiki are
so adaptable flexible and empathetic of their friends that might be
just a little bit different than themselves. We also want our participants to know their
wider Global community so we create lots of opportunities to introduce different cultures and
destinations through various activities we teach different languages cultural dances and sampling
foods from other countries. We have directors out there creating the experience of exploring the
World by learning through different countries ev
ery week to the extent that they reenact going
through an airport customs with little passports and boarding onto a cardboard airplane we've
even had directors set up opportunities for their keiki to do pen pal letters with kids on the
East Coast we create all of these opportunities so we can expose our keiki to what else there is
in the world and teach them how they can make a positive connection and impacts wherever they
go. With a sense of place in community we want our keiki to know the
importance of every Circle they
belong in. From their immediate family to their wider community and how they play a valuable and
important part in every community that they belong to. Our third program outcome is
leadership here we aim to increase the ability to develop leaders and Community
contributors we want to create a safe place to learn and practice employability
skills Foster Civic contributors and Global thinkers and to enable and Empower
individuals to strive for personal growth
. Our Junior leader program during summer
fun allows teenagers an opportunity to build their skills in communication responsibility and
Leadership most Junior leaders will go through an interview process before they start volunteering
and an evaluation process throughout the program. They may assist with implementing activities they
lead assembly songs and assist with the summer food service program while the day is filled with
fun responsibilities that keep these teenagers engaged we're co
nstantly challenging them to
build and grow these important life skills. For our adult leaders summer fun is sometimes
their first employment opportunity we work with these young adults to refine and strengthen their
organization skills critical thinking and problem solving their oral and written communication
skills and their sense of responsibility they learn how to communicate and engage with people of
varying ages and how to adapt and adjust to their audience sometimes we start with you
ng adults that
can barely fill out an application by themselves but yet at the end of summer they're capable
of speaking in front of large crowds planting and implementing comprehensive lesson plans and
organizing and meeting groups of energetic and young keiki and while it's easy to look at our
volunteers and staff that are in identified leadership roles we cannot forget how we're also
nurturing the leadership skills in our keikis as well some programs are designed where the children
migh
t have leadership roles so maybe they're the line leader for the day or they're leading the
morning stretches. While other programs have designed their finale program where the children
are writing their own scripts and choreographing their own dance routines these directors are
offering fun opportunities for the keiki to grow and stretch their leadership skills and abilities we
understand how it takes a village to raise a child and we're proud that we're helping to nurture and
develop our
Island's Future Leaders so while we may have always been creating quality programs
and activities this outcomes based approach to programming allows our staff to create a
Clear Vision and purpose for the activities they conduct, and it drives staff to be very intentional and purposeful in their planning in implementation but where we really see the
beneficial impact is on our program participants this refined way of program planning helps us
to develop the whole child through the various act
ivities and lessons taught it allows us to
turn our parks into safe communities for our participants and a place they know they can try
new things Thrive and grow our outcomes allow our teenage volunteers to have increased opportunities
to build their leadership skills increase their sense of personal responsibility and to have
an increased appreciation for community service our young adults have the opportunity to develop
and refine their skills to be tomorrow's leaders we give them employ
ment opportunities in a fun
group setting while adding value to their own community and while we may have always been
offering activities and experiences we're all eager to raise the standards for what our
participants volunteers and staff can expect to get after being part of the Department of
Parks and Recreation I thank you for listening and learning about our outcomes based approach to
programming and our Recreation refresh outcomes as we start this collaborative Journey with all
of yo
u you know we're very excited to share more about what we do and also to learn about you and
your organizations we're curious to learn what you think success looks like in the work that
we all do and how do you measure success in your own organizations we're also curious how our
outcomes and program outcomes um and approaches are similar to what you might Implement in your
own programs is there anything anyone might want to share in particular or are there any questions
this particular sect
ion is of great interest to me I work with young people who experience homelessness
and one of the things we talk about consistently is that homelessness is really the catastrophic
persistent loss of family loss of community we all know people who are experiencing unemployment
struggling substance but it's when they actually lose that connection when the family finally says
enough you're experiencing homelessness and so what we look at with young people is where are the touch points where are
the places where we can fill in the gaps and really build
that Social Capital around young people who it might not be that great for them at home and
yet every day they're in our Parks every day they show up to our drop-in centers because the
work that we do fills that void and so I'm I'm very very interested in this and I commend
you for for looking at at these program outcomes I want you all to put me out of work is why I am here but really and I think a lot of where you're going to come
to is how do you measure this it's something that we talk about at our organization what does Wellness look
like and what does Wellness look like if you come from a community that's a generational trauma
generational poverty what Wellness might look very very very different and so those
are my takeaways and I'm really excited to follow you on this journey so thank you thank you I can
actually Echo Carla said I think you know these three items as outcomes they're really really
incredible so
the work that that I do with Center for tomorrow's leader is obviously in the name
we have an interest in leadership development partnership with schools but obviously Health
and Wellness in a sense of place a huge part of leadership so I mean we've been talking
quite a bit about you know even when it comes to health and wellness what goes into a healthy
way of thinking we only think of mental health sometimes within a certain frame of reference but
there's so much that goes into it and I f
eel like this department has such unique vantage point
to look at the whole Continuum and not just a certain part so that's really exciting sense of
place you know for so many of our young people we're starting to lose all shared spaces
and obviously Tik Tok is not a replacement for a Shared space so again a huge opportunity there and
then for leadership something that Hawaiʻi needs and obviously we have a shared value there so also
wanted to commend you on that and follow to what said what
do you think can you give us
a little bit more information from these three how are the outcomes currently tracking is there
then a general rubric that comes after this or is that still in development how are you currently
starting to develop it down further into specific outcomes so these are just General overall
outcomes the directors like they can design their programs are really looking at what specific that
they want to focus on they all generally still will be tied to one of these th
ree major outcomes
and I believe in our dashboard that we would be able to share as we collecting results we are
polling you know at this point how much of their program is already designed towards those outcomes
and then we will be asking that at the end kind of a follow-up after summer on what they actually did
that was specifically implemented towards reaching those program outcomes. Can I ask one more question: so
what are your current feedback loops that you're designing program so is
it I mean obviously
there's neighborhood boards there's parents there's all different ways how are you currently
getting feedback on programs? I think it might vary from site to site with staff it kind of goes
from as simple as getting kind of verbal that kind of talking to participants getting feedback
maybe from parents that have children that participated in the class talking with the
teenagers themselves you know like myself at the end of summer I did a sit down with my junior
leaders
you know we kind of talked over summer and okay hey kind of what's up for next summer you
know what did you like this summer what did you not like you know what can we change what do you
want to add into the program so I think a lot of really listening to the people that are already
there we are also looking and expanding into how we can utilize Community survey so I think
that's something that the department is really embracing and kind of stepping into kind of a
direction that we may not
have strongly taken as a whole collective in the past there might
have been individuals that was really doing it but I feel that right now we're kind of taking
a comprehensive kind of standard approach that we're approaching that so hopefully we'll have
other opportunities to be collecting Community input wait so it sound like it sounds like this
is new then you're embarking on something new to be more intentional in setting yes specific
outcomes and how to measure them okay yes so the recr
eation refresh plan was actually
introduced to the department in 2022 again we've always been doing something similar
but it's the first time that we're actually labeling outcomes that we know we're all kind
of striving for the same end goal so that might be the first but the ways that they're doing it
are still going to be very similar to what they we've always been doing it's kind of the core
of what we do as activities okay so it sounds like there's potential for this board to provide
s
upport in terms of how to operationalize those outcomes and how to collect
that data perhaps consistently across the different sites so that you can demonstrate that
Collective impact is correct yes definitely okay great I'm just curious the Junior
leader program sounds very similar to I work really closely with the Boys and
Girls Club of Hawaii and they have a leadership and training program have you ever
talked to them about their program as well I myself have not I'm looking at
my colle
agues behind me we have not but that's definitely a great suggestion that we will
definitely be ready on and looking into thank you ok so our next portion is going to
be about our goals and and opportunities for summer fun 2024 first up I'm
going to call Miss Napua Cayetano thank you Napua Aloha and good afternoon Parks Board program
committee mana and I will be sharing today our summer fun 2024 program goals and areas
that we have identified as opportunities for improvement and growth the
department of
Parks and Recreation summer fun program has provided recreational activities
to Oʻahuʻs Youth for almost a century. We are an established program but even we
must embrace change and adapt to remain relevant balancing being Innovative staying
relevant while still respecting our past traditions to propel our summer
fun program towards success we have identified three goals for the upcoming
summer fun 2024 program one is to increase the amount of Oʻahu families and
youth servic
e two is to enhance Staffing Recruitment and three is to provide
a quality program aligned to our division wide standards DPR's summer fun program is for
youth completing kindergarten through to sixth grade we provide 59 summer fun sites
across the island in 2019 we serviced 9,007 youth in 2023 we serviced 7,796 youth our
numbers our registration count numbers drop substantially during the covid shutdown our
numbers are steadily increasing but our goal is not only to get back to pre-co numb
ers
but to exceed that to 10,000 registered participants so to attain our first school
of servicing 10,000 youth in the summer fun program the department will need to hire
over 400 contract Summer Staff to assist with conducting the summer fun program in
your folders you'll find our summer fun recruitment flyer and information on our summer
fun college student employment program we offer some employment and training for college and non-
students providing our employees with invaluable oppo
rtunities for social and personal growth
with added benefit of working within their own communities our third goal is to align our program
to the recently developed division-wide standards and outcomes that promotes a higher quality
programming as discussed earlier by Kelsey with the outcome based approach the program
and activities are purposefully planned and implemented this intentional program design
Works to develop the whole child through the various activities conducted that promotes
physical emotional and social well-being and development well setbacks are an
inevitable part of the journey towards success every setback presents an
opportunity for growth and Improvement we have identified three areas for potential opportunities for growth to obtaining our goals one is recruitment challenges two is
programming design and three is our leadership pipelines workforce shortages post significant
challenges across all Industries today our summer fun program has especially fel
t the effect of
the Staffing shortage the impact of a smaller pool of applicants coming through is that we
are unable to accommodate the demand of the community we are also facing an external
hiring challenge of competitive pay rates by competing businesses and agencies we are
competing against other businesses that are offering perhaps hiring incentives higher pay
flexible schedules and a longer term of employment DPR's recruitment of contract staff
begin to December and we strive to gain
all of our hires by May in our recent survey completed by
our summer fun directors we passed the question we pose the question of what methods
would they use to recruit staff for summer fun 2024 and listed are the five top resources and
responses that they stated 91% stated they use Word of Mouth 66% reported using city and county
DPR ads and tied at 55% was community outreach through posting of flyers and networking
with colleagues through reaching out to DOE and Affiliated organizations
and at 47%
was personal social media through reposting of DPR posts so as shown we rely heavily on Word
of Mouth for recruitment but we're always looking at ways to expand our recruitment methods so that we may hire the staff needed to service our youth now I'd like to introduce Mana
to discuss the additional opportunities for growth. Aloha so our program design the format
of the summer fun program continues to grow change and improve through Innovations of today
as our participants and our
communities continue to evolve so much week the traditional summer
fun program has been modified to some areas to accommodate specific needs for example Kailua
District partner in District 4 has been faced with Staffing concerns so the program has been
adjusted to accommodate staff availability staff will conduct classes in time blocks based on
their availability in this format they are able to conduct programs from 8:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m
where the normal summer fun program would end at 2 w
ith the flexibility in hours Kailua District park
is able to service as participants for a longer period of time this format continues to encourage staff
recruitment because of the flexibility in the schedule another great example would be
not just our staffing concerns but we're also faced with participant recruitment concerns
Fern Community Park in District 2 is another example of Staff Innovation Fern Community
Park ran their program from 8:30 to 2:00 p.m. just like all the other summer
fund programs but the
enrollment was low because the adjacent School ran at the same time so let's try something
else they said Fern Community Park decided to conduct a program that operated from 12:00 p.m.
to 6:00 p.m. instead and guess what you saw an increase in enrollment. This particular program
has been in operation for more than five years now and they continues to operate successfully
and then another somewhat different but great example would be Kamilo Iki Community Park Extended
Care in District One Kamilo Iki staff noticed how beneficial it would be for the participants and
their parents if Extended Care could be provided at the Kamilo Iki site there was no contracted group
to provide additional care after tooth can so the staff began their own what we call summer
flex program both participants and parents were grateful but doesn't end there in the summer
of 2024 Kualoa Regional parking District 4 will Revitalize the overnight team camp where the
goal is to build
and Foster leadership while aligning with our leadership program outcomes
so as I said our summer fun programs continue to grow change and improve through Innovations
of today so let's move from our Innovations to our leadership ship so let's talk about some of
those Innovative leadership opportunities for our youth within our programs as you've already heard
our program Builds on the concept of the whole child and further develops the employability
skills and mental development of our Juni
or leaders and leaders in the program we strive
to build a culture of leadership through the program and have often seen many children move
on to become our pipeline of leadership through the years as Marc has mentioned we want to
keep developing this pipeline by fostering our external growth and connections to be able to
sustain our internal strength our commitment to these individuals is to continually develop their
skills today to become the leaders of tomorrow to build their employabili
ty skills Parks have
offered training of various leadership teams and topics in different ways such as Junior
leader trainings summary trainings leader swap dates and even elections of the summer
fun president and DC of the summer so if you could please would want to get the word out
about the good work that's happening in our communities and how can you help well
if you can talk about us get us out there let people know that yes we are there
we are relevant um um so we just had some post
questions maybe some ideas
things that you folks do for recruitment that could potentially help us. Thank you for sharing this is where we give our feedback couple things immediately jump out to me
is from my personal experience with a 16-year-old who has gone through a few Summers both as
a participant and also as a Junior leader last year was great being a Junior leader she got to
participate and now she's almost 17 and she needs a J.O.B and she needs to make money and so she has
to Pivot
away from Parks and Rec and she'll work for Zippys or Longs and I feel like there's such
a missed opportunity to keep that pipeline I myself my very first real job was parks and Rec with the City of Long Beach and by the time I worked all through high school I mean all through
college you know I had had four or five years you know of part-time experience with a with a
city entity and that just elevated my career and so I would really want to take a look at
at how can you utilize those 16-17
year olds that love what you're doing and they want to be
a part that's one comment that I have as far as training curriculum you we use the five
core competencies and that's for youth workers it's by a guy named JT Fest very very quick read
it talks about respect as a noun and respect as a verb and how we work with young people in that
capacity that's a an entry level for us as we work with youth whos had a lot of trauma and a lot of
things going on but I would recommend that and so we an
d I'll turn over my colleagues for
additional comments thank you. I'd like to chime in because recruitment is a space where Disney
is heavily involved in on a regular basis and I think we do a pretty good job at it and
it's interesting that word of mouth is one of your biggest recruitment tools because honestly as a large employer word of mouth is one of our largest recruitment tools as well but we
incentivize people to continue to utilize that word of mouth and what we do is we provide a
h
iring incentive so anybody who's able to help provide a referral who is then hired with
us we give them an extra dollar amount you know and that could be anything of your choosing at Disney it's anywhere between $300 to $500 but I think just that extra incentive just
to share this type of job opportunity I think could be of benefit to anybody who works
in this department and you know it could be it could be from any single Department I think you know just utilize the people who already work w
ith you and have them continue to share
I'll definitely share on my end I think that word of mouth is a really great tool
that we for sure utilize at Disney thank you I'll just make a quick and yeah I'm curious
about what channels are being used now to recruit and like are there any spaces that you would
like to yeah any other methods that you would like to recruit through that you haven't
been able to already that's one comment slash question the second one is about the training
I don't h
ave a specific training curriculum but at the center on Aging you know we work with
people in terms of empathy training communication skills you know especially for people with
dementia and so similarly you know I'm a big fan of any kind of training that promotes empathy
and inclusion for younger people with different types of disabilities and I have colleagues at
the center on disability studies at who have done you know similar types of training
and if that's being done now and if that's
an interest thank you yeah so I have so many thoughts on this
no we appreciate it. First of all, Workforce Development is the topic not just in Hawaiʻi but Nationwide we're
talking about gen Z right the age currently from 14 to 27 my nonprofit has actually hit the road
to do gen Z workshops on how we're going to meet in the middle because it feels the environment
we're in feels so different so have a lot of thoughts on that but I think one of the things
you're identifying is interesting tha
t there are amazing opportunities with the Department
all the youth leaders I know that have done your program have adored it like absolutely adored it
it was a priority just hearing them talk I got excited even before I joined this board so
obviously there's a lot of opportunity but then we have young people that think that there are
no opportunities and so all the bridge work is getting complicated we've done a lot of internal
surveying you know young people looking on platforms like hand
shake and others that that
we've actually been really slow to adopt even just in Google searching what comes up at the
top so I ask a lot of young people how they find internships and they say I Google intern
and Hawaii and whatever it comes up if that doesn't work out then I perceive that there's
no internship so I think there's a lot kind of on the technology side but I'm wondering to in
partnership with the Department of Education what you do because you use a lot of facilities have
the
re has there been any talk about joining some of the advisory boards that are now part of our
large high schools related to Career academies because I'm wondering if that might be a recruitment an
immediate recruitment so having staff of this department serve on the advisory boards because
then you get to those schools and you're part of their feedback but that's just an idea has
there been any discussion on maybe partnering with the DOE in that way yeah I don't think we've
explored as an A
dvisory board but I know for myself personally because I was a former Waianae High
School teacher I would go back and do things with their Academy because I was familiar with it but
not as an Advisory board so maybe that's something we can explore as a committee as well because
I think there's a lot of potential and the last stuff that I had is you know this generation has
grown up with a huge amount of choice obviously you know Netflix Disney plus sheesh even with Boba
right 25% (inaudible
) and so we've been talking a lot from an employment
standpoint how we add that element of choice as an employee perk so your working you'd have this job
but then I can choose a perk like I myself learn how to swim or I'm a part of a wellness Circle
or something that is also tied to the parks so I put that maybe as a question to how you're
thinking about about the perk component which is obviously very important to this generation and
something that we've done a lot of thinking choice but h
ow you create choice for them the perks of a
position so I guess that's a question what kind of conversation is there then around that I
don't think specifically but maybe unintentionally the perks especially like to the junior leaders
we do a lot of programs with them whether it's after hours taking them out on the weekend and
whether it's like beach things or more formal organized activities I think many of us have
what we call a team program so it enlifts these because they're volunteers
yeah we don't pay them
so this is a way that we can kind of pay them and give back and then encourage them to continue
to participate with us I mean I like to tell our kids like if you participate with us after Summer
Fun hours you know this is our thank you for what you do or put up with throughout the day so and
then we try to as much as possible we've been fortunate to get some funding to pay for
some of these excursions movies whatever so yeah any further discussion about
the presenta
tion I just again want to commend you it's such an undertaking and
you're approaching it with just such a breath of fresh air such positivity, I am really excited. Marc is going to close us out. that concludes our presentation. (inaudible) moving on to the next item on the agenda public testimony we'll now proceed
remote testifiers are there any okay seeing none we will now proceed
an in-person testimony in the auditorium members are there any announcements if none we will move to
adjourn th
ere's no further business. This meeting is adjourned.
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