There is a dearth of vocational education teachers in the Micronesian region. This is a major obstacle to economic development and nation building. In the past the region relied almost completely on volunteers from the United States to develop indigenous human resources. This three-year project aimed to improve the quality and increase the number of indigenous teachers by providing two years of training for selected graduates of the 37- year-old Ponape Agriculture and Trade School (PATS), the Micronesian region's only vocational school.
Unfortunately, developing human resources in this region is not easy. Of the seven graduates selected for training, only four completed the two-year course; the other three dropped out partway through. It became clear that many issues called for further study, including the identification of people suited to becoming teachers, the content of the training, and training methods. For this reason the project was terminated in May 2002, at the end of the current term. It was decided to rethink the most appropriate way to carry out a project matching the need to develop human resources that can contribute to the region's economic development with improvement of the quality of the teachers charged with developing these human resources and consider reviving the project after fiscal 2003.