An evaluator interviewed at least one person from each community team at the sixth workshop, held in a hotel in Hilo on a sunny Sunday in late October. Several other team members were interviewed during community visits prior to the workshop itself. The focus of these interviews was to find out what people were learning about themselves and their communities, what long-term benefits were projected from their MIRA involvement, and what issues were likely to be addressed by their projects.
The general tenor of responses to the first question was that team members felt that they were learning to work together or developing an understanding of the importance of working together.
"We've developed better relationships among team members," said one. "We're also getting better at recognition of our team's talents and abilities." Another person from the same community said the team was learning how to "honor diversity in our group." Although this person was from a team that was disqualified from a grant-funded project, she volunteered in a telephone interview several months later that the community continued to benefit from the MIRA experience and the team was working with other community leaders on several projects that could lead to community betterment. These team members were from South Puna, a community with high unemployment and no public water system except for roof catchments. Only one computer with e-mail capability existed in the entire community, but the team is working to provide other access points.
A team member from South Hilo said that the community had learned how to "chronicle assets and prioritize needs" as part of the MIRA experience. He foresaw improved education in the community's future with improved access to computer capabilities.
"We've learned more about our island," said a team member from Kona. A team member from Ocean View echoed those thoughts: "This is just the beginning" of many good things to come, she said. She also found "so much incentive from the workshops," and anticipated that her team could help their community compete more successfully for grants to improve landscaping and walking/jogging trails.
A Ho'okena team member said the workshops had been "eye-opening," providing what she called "good building blocks" for the future. This person, also from a disqualified team, said her team found the distance to workshops to be a considerable hardship, Intra-team communication is difficult since some team members don't even have telephones. She said it was unfortunate that many people focused on getting the dollars and not on what they could learn. Yet her team is active in development of a commu-nity association, something they planned to continue.
A team member from Honoka'a said he found the asset mapping a major learning point, as it had led to a "broader sense of what's in the community." The MIRA opportunity is leading to "more community involvement." He also anticipated that an outcome would be improved computer capacity in the youth center. His comments also indicated that he would have liked even more time on some workshop topics, even though he recognized that an all-day session was difficult for some participants to find time for with the significant travel required from some communities.
From the community of Volcano, which, as its name implies, is the closest to Volcano National Park, a team member said he was impressed with the amount of "tech stuff that he learned, including what the "kids" on the teams taught him. He also said he had learned "how to be a leader." And he volunteered: "It's nice to know that people care about their community,"
A team member from Na'alehu/Pahala was especially insightful when he said he liked the idea that the MIRA workshops weren't done in a mandated sequence and that a lot of decision-making was left to the Cluster itself. It provided an opportunity for adding to community capacity while learning new skills. In the latter category, he said he had picked up an evaluation strategy and applied it immediately in his work.
In an interview in Laupahoehoe, a team member said that MIRA was providing a way for "those who had made a small commitment to make a larger commitment to the community."
Every team indicated in some way that they anticipated that their community's technology capacity would improve as a result of their MIRA experience.
