Situations wanted: rural Alaska Natives have a range of education and job training opportunities.

• Author: Campbell, Melissa
• Position: Alaska Native Business News

Instead of spending the lazy days of summer sleeping in and hanging out, Stephanie Myers chose to go to the hospital. For the last three years, 19-year-old Myers has taken part in a summer internship through the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium.

She works with patients and learns from health care professionals at the health consortium's Alaska Native Medical Center in East Anchorage. She gets paid and she gets experience toward a degree in nursing, as she is enrolled at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

It's not just young Alaska Natives ready to delve into the working world and the ensuing responsibilities; older adults are seeking job training and post-secondary education opportunities around the state. There are several local, state and tribal programs whose primary focus is to help Alaska Natives get a better education and to get a job.

Various opportunities are provided through the Workforce Investment Act, better known as the Welfare to Work initiative, where cash benefits are limited to a total of five years. Statewide, the caseload of welfare recipients has dropped 40 percent in the last five years, according to the governor's office.

But nearly 150 villages are exempt from the act because of the lack of employment opportunities, according to the state Division of Public Assistance. The state doesn't keep statistics on the numbers of rural Alaska Natives it serves who have gotten off public assistance. Three nonprofit organizations oversee the temporary assistance program in their regions: the Association of Village Council Presidents (Calista Corp.), Tanana Chiefs Conference (Doyon), and the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska (Sealaska Corp.). None of them returned calls for this story.

WHAT'S MISSING

The state has plenty of training programs and centers in rural Alaska, according to a recently released study by the Alaska Workforce Investment Board (formerly known as the Alaska Human Resource Investment Council). However, there's not enough collaboration and money invested to realize the full potential.

"We have the infrastructure in place," said Jim Sanders, the board's director. "What we don't have are the operational dollars to adequately staff the facilities, which would help in the development of quality programs."

There's nothing to eliminate, or even find, duplication in efforts, the study found. And there needs to be better alignment between the K-12 school system and the regional vocational training centers to ensure the needs of employers are being met. Such collaboration also could help train workers for future projects, thus increasing local hire and reducing imported labor.

For rural Alaskans, getting an education is challenging at best. Hampering...