Akakū Project YBEAM Receives Atherton Family Foundation Grant

YBEAM graduate Colin McGee on location at Baldwin Beach Park for the Maui Butterfly SUP Event. Photo credit: YBEAM.

By Maui Now Staff

Akakū: Maui Community Media is the recipient of a $7,500 grant from the Atherton Family Foundation.

The funds will be used to secure reliable transportation for Akakū’s Youth Broadband Education Awareness Mentoring program.

“We are ecstatic in receipt of this support,” said Akakū Director of Education & YBEAM, Kat Tracy in a press release announcement.

She continued saying, “It will help enable us to safely transport youth to more community locations to help those areas get their messages out and voices heard. Even though we are an island community, it is absolutely critical to have transport for the youth in program training and for the job opportunities after, especially because of the unique ʻmobileʻ element to these initiatives,” she said.

Program leaders say they hope to raise at least $15,000 to acquire a used mini-van for the program.

The YBEAM program was developed with a grant from ZeroDivide out of San Francisco via a federal Broadband Technology Opportunity Program grant in 2011.

YBEAM is further supported in part with grants from: The Fred Baldwin Foundation, MEDB’s Bridging Pathways, HEI Charitable Foundation, Maui Visitor Industry Charity Walk and Whole Foods Market.

The program teaches youth how to produce short community stories using broadband technology in an all ‘mobile’ environment.

YBEAM is free and is currently recruiting for the summer.  Applications are available at the following direct LINK.