How Entrepreneurial Education Can Reduce Migration From American Samoa

Look around. Think about your family members who have boarded a plane, promising to return, while life slowly takes them elsewhere? You feel that absence in your family gatherings and in your community. Young people are going away, searching for something they don’t believe they can find at home.

American Samoa faces one of the highest net migration rates in the world, with an estimated net migration rate of about minus 29.8 migrants per 1,000 people in 2022. This means many residents, especially young adults, leave in search of jobs, higher incomes and education abroad.

But what if this story can flip with a set of skills? What if you, and people like you, could learn to build the opportunities you’re currently leaving to find? This is the real promise of entrepreneurial education. It’s not about dry textbooks. It’s about giving you the tools to create your own job, right where you stand.

Why Leaving Seems Like the Only Answer

American Samoa has a young and urban population, with more than 87 percent of people living in urban areas as of 2023, which increases pressure on the local job market. When quality jobs are scarce, young people are more likely to move to Hawaii or the mainland United States.

You know the reasons. You’ve lived them. Maybe you’ve scanned the job listings and felt your options shrink. You’ve compared paychecks with family on the mainland and felt the weight of that difference. It’s logical. When the path ahead looks narrow, you look for a wider road. So you go. But this choice, made by so many, leaves our home weaker. It drains our talent and makes the dream of a vibrant local economy even harder to reach.

A Different Skill Set: Building Instead of Asking

Now, imagine learning something different in school or a community program. Instead of only practicing for a job interview, you practice building a business model. You identify a problem you see every day: maybe it’s a lack of convenient local food, or a service your aiga needs. You learn to design a solution. You calculate real costs, set real prices, and maybe even earn real money from a small, starter venture.

This learning changes you. It shifts your mindset from “Who will hire me?” to “What can I create?” It teaches you to see our islands through a lens of possibility. Our culture, our environment, our community needs become the ingredients for your livelihood. You stop planning your exit and start sketching your blueprint.

The Practical Toolkit You Actually Need

For this to feel real, the training has to be concrete. It’s about a practical toolkit designed for your specific home.

Understanding the Money Flow: How do you truly manage cash? What does responsible borrowing look like? With new funding sources arriving, like the substantial SSBCI funds, grasping these concepts turns you from a dreamer into a credible builder.

Using the Digital World: Your location is no longer a limit. You can learn to market a product, manage online sales, or offer a skilled service to a client anywhere on the planet. Your customer base is global, even if your feet are in the soil of your village.

Learning from Those Who Did It: This means connecting with the shop owner, the farmer, the fisherman who turned an idea into a paycheck. Their stories of trial and error are your most valuable textbook.

Leaning on Your Global Family: Your aiga network stretches across oceans. They can be your first supporters, your test market, and your source of wisdom. Learning to engage this network turns a global diaspora into a local asset.

You Are Not Starting from Zero

Take heart. This isn’t a lonely dream. Look at our neighbors in the Pacific. In the Solomon Islands, young people just like you used simple co-working spaces and mentorship to launch businesses. They said it gave them the hands-on skills formal school missed. That model exists. You can build it here, for you.

Where Your Ideas Can Take Root

Your venture can grow in fertile ground. The opportunities are in sectors we all know are part of our future:

Sharing Your Story: Creating genuine cultural and eco-tourism experiences that visitors can’t find anywhere else.

Growing Your Value: Processing, branding, and selling our unique agricultural and fishing products, especially to Samoans overseas who crave a taste of home.

Serving Your Community: Filling everyday needs—from transport and repair to tech support and elder care, builds a stable business and strengthens our community.

Working Beyond the Reef: With the right digital skills, you can secure remote work for an international company while choosing to raise your family right here.

Your Next Steps and the Shared Responsibility

Making this future solid requires action. For you, it might mean seeking out a new training program, finding a mentor, or simply giving your business idea a name.

For the community, it means weaving these practical skills into our education. It means creating physical spaces where you can work, connect, and access resources. It means directly linking you, the builder, with existing support and loan programs. The success will be measured by the businesses you open and, most importantly, by the choices you make to stay.

The Choice to Build Your Life Here

This is ultimately about choice. It’s about giving you the power to choose your future. When you possess the skills, the confidence, and a real pathway to build a life here, staying becomes a powerful, positive decision. Leaving is no longer your only road to success.

It’s about building an American Samoa where you don’t have to say goodbye to your culture and family to build a good life. Where you can stand on your own land, use your own mind, and shape our shared future from right here. The blueprint starts with the skills we choose to learn and teach today. The first step is yours to take.

At its best, education does more than prepare individuals for employment. It strengthens communities, develops leadership, and supports long-term resilience. When learning is flexible, accessible, and rooted in real-world application, it becomes a way for people to grow without leaving, and to shape meaningful futures right where they are.