FEELING LEFT OUT AND FIGHTING BACK

    Ann Peterson, who had worked for PATH, a trails advocacy group, was one of several participants with a deep interest in planning. The situation in Kona was a classical case of one part of a county feeling left out by the planning decisions taking place elsewhere. The Kona team qualified for a grant and used it to gather information on 200 county organizations, and to draw up a survey to get input from local citizens. While this is something the country should have been doing, they never had the resources, and the MIRA volunteers fulfilled that role by using the Web, meetings, and print publications to distribute the survey. This was the first time many people had been asked for their opinions about planning priorities on the island. About 25 percent of the surveys were returned electronically; the rest by mail. The results were tabulated and submitted to the county planners. The Kona team found the training sessions useful in subsequent meetings and planning sessions with other group projects. Dwight Clark, who had had little contact with computer technology at the beginning of the MIRA project, is now designing the web pages for Hulihe'e Palace, a historic building run by the Daughters of Hawai'i. These older women are quite conservative and protective of their native heritage. He said it was an honor to be entrusted by these women to convey the correct cultural information to others. Another Kona team member was Van Malan. In an e-mail he described his involvement:

"I had joined the Kona MIRA group after newly arriving to Hawaii and I was also looking for work. I am a software developer and I was drawn to the MIRA project since it mentioned technology and geography, two subjects dear to me. The other benefit to a new person like me was that I got to meet many people throughout the island that I would not normally come into contact.

The project that the Kona group completed was a large public questionnaire about the review of the Hawaii County General Plan. This was mainly focused around a web site that participants could fill out in their homes. I was the sole implementer of the web site.

The Kona group thought it would be great to have someone speak about Geographic Information Systems applications on personal computers and using computerized map technology to assist in community planning. Two of us volunteered to find someone to speak to the group. Although the person I found to speak ended up not being chosen, Shannon McElvaney of Geo InSight, International, we became friends and after several months I met his boss, Marge Elliot. Later she hired me to implement GIS on a Palm Pilot. So here I am today, an employee working from home for a California company with offices in Hawaii due to a contact that I made for MIRA."