Who we Are: JCI & the AAJC
Junior Chamber International is an international young professional organization with over 5000 local chapters and 200,000 members worldwide. Our mission is to provide development opportunities for our membership while creating positive and sustainable change in our communities. The Asian American Junior Chamber of Commerce (AAJC) is one of our local chapters here in Hawaii. The AAJC and our partners aim to connect with different sectors of society through meaningful community projects. These relationships empower us to have sustainable impact in our community. Since our inception, our aim was to focus on our community’s needs. How did we begin this journey? It started with getting feedback from you, the members of our community. Based on your interest in improving quality education, and creating a better economic environment in Hawaii, our chapter came together to bring you our first community project, AERo.
The Need in the Community
A big issue that was observed, was that there is a growing problem of local talent leaving Hawaii for better career opportunities on the mainland. In order to curb this problem, we first looked to better educate our youth and motivated them towards higher education. Second, more competitive career opportunities need to be established locally. With AERo, we look to tackle the first step of this problem by educating more students and motivating them to pursue higher education in a STEM related degree.
In schools, local robotics programs provide an amazing opportunity for students to learn leadership, teamwork, and STEM based technical skill. As the AAJC, we look to continue to foster this extraordinary learning environment by introducing a new and rapidly growing sector of robotics. Quadcopters, more commonly known as drones, are poised to become a multibillion dollar industry. Inspection, environmental monitoring, photography, film, journalism, and entertainment are some of the potential applications of commercial drones. Utilizing quadcopter technology, we now have a very exciting vehicle through which we could utilize to educate students about pursuing STEM based careers. Utilizing a creative Newtonian Mechanics Curriculum, and our Flight Academy, we created an environment that will foster both education, and sportsmanship.