Not Your Typical July: How We Took Nalukai From Boarding To Virtual

“Four, three, two, one—let’s open the room and let them in!”

The them were twenty-four of some of Hawai’i’s most ambitious and enterprising young people. Assembled from Kaua’i, O’ahu, Maui, and Hawai’i island, these exceptional high school students from public, private, charter, and homeschools that we call Founders (as in, founders of companies) were quite eager to meet each other and delve into the world of social, cultural, and tech entrepreneurship.  Were this a typical July, the room would have been our course-room in Hawai’i Preparatory Academy’s Energy Lab, an innovative and impressive structure that Nalukai Academy has been privileged to run out of for the last five years. 

This is not a typical July.  

In early May I had to make the heartbreaking decision to heed social distancing guidelines enacted to thwart the spread of the coronavirus and cancel our reservation at H.P.A.  Given that we started as a tech camp and that each year we have had  substantial online pre-work sessions for the students, we decided to convert the 10-day Nalukai Summer Startup Camp to the Nalukai Academy Virtual Summer Startup Camp. 

And so the Founders instead entered into a Zoom room, where they were greeted by our enthusiastic facilitation team who had spent months revising our curriculum for the online format.  Joining the facilitators were eight alumni team leaders who had agreed to help us establish the culture of Nalukai. According to our 112 alumni from the last five years, this ethos has been one of collaboration, intense learning, teamwork, deep trust, and kindness.  These we believe are essential components for relative strangers coming together for an intensive 15-days to conceptualize and build products and services designed to tackle challenges that they see Hawai’i facing in the next ten years. 

And so on July 1, twenty-four eager Founders armed with a Nalukai-provided laptop (thanks for our generous donors) as well as a journal and a set of colored pens to capture significant off-screen reflections of their insights, flooded into the Zoom room to meet each other as well as their instructors and guides - innovative educators, industry professionals, entrepreneurs, cultural practitioners, health & wellness leaders, and alumni team leaders. The primary objective: lay a foundation on which Founders could collaboratively develop and launch their ideas as well as their ambitions.  For regardless of whether we assemble in person or online, our youth need to connect, to be challenged, and to be encouraged to develop new solutions to problems that earlier generations have either created or failed to solve. We owe them at least that.