Native Corporations underwrite education: distance learning, rural campuses support job preparation.

• Author: Stricker, Julie
• Position: NATIVE BUSINESS

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

A few years ago, Mary Viveiros set out to pursue her lifelong dream of becoming a nurse. Educational opportunities were scarce, however. She and her 10 children lived in Kotzebue, but the nearest nursing school was 560 miles away in Anchorage.

Viveiros went to the Chukchi Campus of the University of Alaska and requested money to move to Anchorage to study pre-nursing, but was turned down. Then Maniilaq Association stepped in. The Alaska Native nonprofit organization for the NANA region provided scholarships for Viveiros, brought professors in, helped pay for instructors, equipment and facilitate a partnership with Weber State University for a distance education nursing program. Viveiros especially credits Phyllis Boskofsky, saying, "She was instrumental in making it happen for a nursing program to come to me."

Through a combination of distance and face-to-face classes, Viveiros became a registered nurse in 2005 and earned a degree in health care administration. She recruited other students and today the village of about 3,000 in remote Northwest Alaska has a thriving campus and is helping train its own health care workers.

Viveiros, who now works for the Maniilaq Association, is grateful for the opportunities. "I am very happy to be working for Maniilaq and my people," she says. "The smile on the elders' face is very welcoming and rewarding to me when I walk into their hospital room to take care of them."

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Lincoln Saito, director of the Chukchi Campus, credits Maniilaq for making the nursing program possible and improving health care opportunities in the remote region.

THE CORPORATIONS

The regional corporations had two mandates: to foster economic growth and to provide for the well-being of their shareholders, who number about 100,000 today.

Initially, the corporations set up scholarship funds, helping educate thousands of shareholders--some of whom today play important roles in Alaska Native corporations and have assumed other leadership positions.

Helping boost higher education is one of the best dividends Native organizations can pay, says Susan Anderson, a Cook Inlet Region Inc. scholarship recipient.

Anderson received one of the first CIRI scholarships in the early 1980s. Today, CIRI has given out more than 10,000 awards totaling more than $14 million. Anderson is the president and CEO of the CIRI Foundation, the nonprofit arm of the Anchorage-based corporation.

"I'm really fortunate to have...