A career workshop entitled “Know Your Worth” was held for students from the Pacific Islands on Friday, March 1 at the Aloha Center Ballroom. The event unified more than 100 students and included guest speakers who are faculty or work at BYU-Hawaii. Attendees were taught how present themselves professionally and confidently share their strengths.
Ron Chand, a senior from Fiji double majoring in accounting and business marketing, helped organize the event along with Elijah Lemusuifeauali’i. Chand commented, “This [Career] workshop was designed to help empower people with confidence for things like the APCC.
“We were seeing that there were a lot of tools that BYUH gives the students, like Asia Pacific Career Conference (APCC). But if students don’t know how to use it, they fail at it. There is no use for them.
Chand expressed the purpose of the workshops is to “help people find confidence and know how to market themselves. The hardest question I’ve been asked in interviews is tell me about yourself. And I blank out. We blank out. We don’t know how to sell ourselves to potential employers.”
Australia Club President, Elijah Lemusuifeauali’i, a sophomore from Australia majoring in pacific island studies, shared another purpose for having the event was, “That people know they have value and power. They can achieve anything they want to.
“There’s no need to continue the island stigma of Western society. We’re in the modern world now, and we can do whatever we put our minds to.”
Kuulani Reimer, an undeclared freshman from Tahiti, spoke of how the workshops were helping the Polynesian students. She shared “They gave us advice in order to be more self-confident. To be more prepared to apply for jobs after school. They shared experiences. We were given practical advice and taught how to market ourselves.”
Four workshops were setup and several guest speakers spoke with groups of students, training them on various subjects such as preparing an elevator speech, understanding personal worth, how appearance affects marketability, and finding value in your personal identity.
Why the focus on Polynesian students?
Lemusuifeauali’i explained, “This started from the vision of the Australia chapter, which is ‘unity through diversity’.
“Not many people realize Australia is part of the pacific, and for me as a Samoan-Maori living in Australia, I’ve seen the struggles pacific people face in a Westernized society. I want to try and help Polynesians be more unified.”
Chand, referring to all students, but specifically the ones from Polynesia, said, “The students have so much potential here. I just want them to see it.”
In preparation for the event Lemusuifeauali’i said, “It was a bit stressful. I reached out to each of the Polynesian chapter presidents and told them why we want to do this workshop. They were all for… bringing the pacific students together for this event. We worked together, collaborated and here we are.”
Students from the Tahiti, Fiji, New Zealand, Cook Islands and Australia club were represented at the event. After the workshops and speeches concluded, food was served for the attendees. Cultural performances from the Cook Islands and New Zealand were also presented at the conclusion of the event.
Reimer discussed what she took away from the event, saying, “I learned that you have to be careful on social media. You need to have a clean account because employers are looking at you. Overall, what I got from the workshop was to be prepared for the future.”
Writer: Will Krueger
