Advice for college-bound person who wants to move to Hawaii after graduation (Honolulu: high school)

[HonuMan]

Hi everyone! My wife is from Hilo and has family there and in Honolulu. She moved to Oregon 12 years ago, which is where we met. Her youngest son is 19, and after taking some time off after high school to work and try to figure out what to do with his life, he is ready to go to college. He loves Hawaii and wants to move back after graduation, either to Hilo or Honolulu. Does anyone have advice on what would be a good field for him to get into, in terms of being able to find employment? He's extremely extraverted and has great social skills. Money is somewhat important to him, but not it's not his primary motivator (that is, he wants to live comfortably but doesn't need to be rich). He's a natural helper and wants to do something that will help the people of Hawaii. Of course, one can be helpful in many different ways.

My stepson has three relatives in Hawaii about his age, and they're studying Social Work, Marine Biology, and Tropical Agriculture respectively. He doesn't have the temperament or aptitude for a science career, though, and he isn't interested in a profession that would require a master's degree. I think he'd be good in any sort of business, government, advocacy, or teaching profession. We were watching a program hosted by Jason Lee and Skylark about sustainable practices in Hawaii, and they mentioned an organization that offers scholarships for people who want to study agricultural, food science, or conservation. I don't know if he'd qualify for a scholarship, but when we researched those fields, agribusiness and agricultural education looked like two study programs he might enjoy and be good at.

Anyway, does anyone have any guidance? Most of my wife's relatives in Hawaii don't have college degrees, and their kids are the first generation that's going to college. My wife's oldest son moved back to Hilo for four years without a degree, and after struggling at low-paying jobs and barely making ends meet, he moved back to Oregon, where he found a better job in the high-tech industry. (We're encouraging him to finish college, though.)

[hotzcatz]

Sustainable agriculture might be a good choice as well as a "field of endeavor" which will need workers for probably the rest of his life. With what looks like a long term decreasing economy, looking for a career in food production would seem to have better job security than tourism based jobs.

Setting up a produce packing plant for the various produce from local farms might be a worthwhile thing, or starting a farmer's market or even a vegetable stand or a vegetable truck might provide him with people interaction as well as an income. We seem to be lacking the interface between farmers and the marketplace. At the moment farmers have to grow, process and sell their produce so there might be room for an enterprising person in that process and sell area somewhere.

How about setting up a bio-char facility where he buys unwanted waiwai (wild guava), tranforms it into charcoal and sells that to the farmers to add to their soil? That is some of the cheapest fertilizer around and it works well in tropical soils since our rainfall quickly leaches out chemical fertilizers. Folks would probably pay him to remove the guava and then it could be turned into a sellable product.

[HonuMan]

Thanks, hotzcatz -- those are some great ideas! My stepson is good at connecting different people. When someone needs something done, he usually knows someone else who can do it. He has the names and numbers of over 300 friends in his cell phone. I don't think I've had that many friends total in my entire life. I'll run some of your ideas by him. He's still young and doesn't know what possibilities are open to him, and this will get him thinking.