Operation · Pā Enua · 2027–2029
Operation Pā Enua 27–29 is the Academy's first campaign: a three-year programme to put free digital technology learning within reach of every young person on every inhabited island in the Cook Islands, and to mentor the ones who keep going all the way to paid technical work.
It is the vehicle, not the destination. The Academy outlives the operation; this is how the Academy reaches the pā enua first.
Short digital technology courses, open to any young Cook Islander at no cost. Each one runs two to four hours and ends in something you have made, not a quiz. They are in production now.
The programme has three stages. The first is open to every young Cook Islander on every island. Each stage after that is an invitation, earned by what you have already done. The group gets smaller and the mentoring gets closer at each step.
Short recorded courses on the Galaxy Maps platform, free to any young person, at school or at home. Every map ends in something the learner makes.
A cohort of apprentices who have finished five foundation maps and made something of their own. One year, four terms of mentor-monitored maps, with a laptop on loan.
Graduates who finish the Academy and ship a working project are paired with a mentor inside Tai Collective and work on live projects for island organisations.
A household on Mitiaro can now buy much the same connection as a household in Auckland. What it cannot buy is anyone to teach its fifteen-year-old what to do with it.
There is no digital technologies learning area in the national curriculum, and no computing qualification taught on any island. The existing route for a young person who wants a technical career is to leave home at fifteen and board somewhere else.
We are building a route that does not require them to leave.
Built for a shared laptop and a slow connection, and for short sittings. Every example uses Cook Islands material: your own speed tests, a real national debate, a story from home. Each map stands alone, and taken in order each one picks up what the last one made: the machine first, then AI on your side, then code, then an address of your own to publish everything that follows.
You makeA one-page machine card, a solved terminal treasure hunt, a route map off the island, and a file of your own speed-test readings in your first git repo
You makeA bad-prompt and good-prompt pair with both answers, one real thing done with the agent, and the AI log, started here and kept through every map
You makeThree small programs, a program that reads your own data and answers a question, and a terminal game, quiz or tool in a git repo
You makeA personal page live at a real address, with your program running on it
You makeA two-sided brief on a national issue with every source named, and a scored panel transcript
You makeA dataset you collected, an honest chart and a liar's chart side by side, and a claim with its limit
You makeA paper sketch, its clean SVG, an animated version for the web, and a brand sheet with a logo for print or clothing
You makeA 90-second script, a real film, an AI-generated film from the same script, and the audience's verdict
Remote mentoring rests on relationships built face to face. The captain visits the islands in person, meeting principals, teachers, families and the island government, installing and testing equipment, and setting up the routine each island will run: where learners work, when devices charge, how they connect, and who to call when something breaks.
Return visits keep those relationships alive, film local material for the maps, and hand day-to-day support to local learning champions. The visits are also where apprentices meet their captain in person.
Any island that cannot be reached in a given year is set up remotely and visited the next.
The platform logs when an apprentice starts and completes each mission. The captain sees the whole cohort on one screen: who is moving and who has stalled.
Apprentices submit what they made. The captain reviews it and sends it back with comments when it needs another pass.
A help request goes straight to the captain, who replies within two working days. Asking a good question is taught, and it counts.
Anyone stalled for ten days gets a personal check-in. There is a weekly online session for the whole cohort, plus a logbook reviewed each term.
A parent or guardian consents before anyone under 18 enrols, and signs the laptop loan agreement.
Sessions are group sessions by default. One-to-one sessions with under-18s are scheduled, logged and open to a parent to join. Everyone mentoring holds a current police check.
Progress data is used for mentoring and reporting, never sold, and never used for advertising. Reporting is in totals, not names.
Sessions are not recorded by default. Families can see what is held about their child and ask for it to be deleted.
Avaiki Tech Academy is built and delivered by Tai Collective, which has run youth technology programmes for six years and is now based on Mauke. It runs on Galaxy Maps, a learning platform in development since 2021, which records every learner's progress so a mentor can follow it from another island.
The Academy is one step on a longer path. Foundation maps are open to anyone. The Academy is invited. After that comes one-to-one mentoring on real work, and in time a campus at Te Are Vananga o Oneunga on Mauke.
The last step is the voyage out: graduates carrying what they have learnt to other Pacific nations and peoples, by vaka or by plane. The name nods to our ancestral roots as voyagers.
If you are a young person who wants in, a parent, a teacher, a school, an island council or an organisation who wants to support the work, tell us. The foundation maps are free and open to everyone when they land, and we will let you know the moment they do.
Avaiki Tech