Enhancing community well-being through partnerships in education
PREL maintains service centers in Hawai‘i (Honolulu [PREL's main office] and Maui) American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia (Chuuk, Kosrae, Pohnpei, and Yap), Guam, the Republic of the Marshall Islands (Majuro and Ebeye), and the Republic of Palau.
PREL serves schools in these 10 Pacific island political entities, whose affiliation with the U.S. ranges from statehood to free association. The entities are spread across more than 4.9 million square miles of ocean and hundreds of islands and atolls, many of which are uninhabited. Pacific people may live by fishing and farming on an isolated atoll, or they may work in a complex international economic system with close ties to Japan, the U.S., or other Pacific Rim nations.
The schools are challenged not only by political and economic diversity, but also by cultural and linguistic differences; at least nine different Pacific cultures are prominent in the region. The main language of instruction, English, is not the home language for most students outside Hawai‘i. “School” may mean a modern, well-equipped building, or it may mean a wooden platform with a thatched roof and no electricity. “Teacher” may mean anyone from a high school graduate to a PhD.
The 10 entities have about 285,000 students in approximately 660 public schools. The nine entities beyond Hawai‘i have about 104,000 students in approximately 375 public schools.
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