Cultivating Healing: How OYAH Weaves Indigenous Culture into Youth Empowerment for All Youth
On January 21st, communities across the United States marked the 9th annual National Day of Racial Healing (NDRH). This observance celebrates our shared values, builds common ground, and inspires collective action to heal and to build a more just world. Organizations...
Kawailoa 2024 Quarter Three Newsletter
Kawailoa 2024 Quarter Two Newsletter
An illuminating, rewarding journey toward racial equity
Originally shared on Lever For Change by Ted Gregory, click here to read. While pursuing $20 million challenge grants, two organizations focused their long-term vision and learned about racial equity. After receiving the award, they’re expanding innovative, effective...
Youth Voices Resonate: Kinai ‘Eha Receives Standing Ovation at the 2024 Rural Summit in Lexington, KY
Within each individual, regardless of background, experience, or circumstance, is a story to tell. At the beginning of May, six youth from Kinai ‘Eha along with their Executive Director, Josiah Akau, and PIDF President and CEO, Shawn Kanaʻiaupuni, PhD., traveled to...
Kawailoa 2024 Quarter One Newsletter
Kawailoa 2023 End of Year Newsletter
$50,000 granted to a nonprofit helping to get incarcerated youth back on track
Originally shared on KITV by Chloe Marklay, click here to read. HONOLULU, Hawaii (KITV4)-- Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc. awarded a $50,000 grant to partnering organizations, Partners in Development Foundation and Kinai ‘Eha, to support Hale Ka Hana, a...
Column: What youth need to succeed (it’s not what you might think)
Originally shared on Star Advertiser by Haumea Velasco, Leah Delos Santos and Sydney Story, click here to read. Discipline and a college degree are adult ideas of what students need to succeed. For youth who have a roof over their head and social support, no...
$20 Million to Reform Youth Incarceration
Originally shared on Hawaii Business Magazine by Noelle Fujii-Oride, click here to read. Opportunity Youth Action Hawaiʻi received a $20 million award in the fall from the Kellogg Foundation to advance its goal of replacing youth incarceration with a restorative...
Convening engages community to support opportunities for youth action
Over 50 Hawaiʻi community partners and stakeholders gathered at the Kawailoa Youth and Family Wellness Center in support of creating opportunities for youth action. Participants learned more about OYAH’s efforts to replace youth incarceration using a transformative...
How Hawaiʻi Is Ending Youth Incarceration After More Than a Century of Colonization
Originally shared on Nonprofit Quarterly by Annabelle Le Jeune on Jan. 19 2023, click here to read. A young Native Hawaiian farmer shows up to work every day to cultivate indigenous crops using traditional and contemporary methods to feed his island home community....
A project that aims to end youth incarceration
Originally shared on Midweek's Proof Positive series by Annabelle Le Jeune on Dec. 14 2022, click here to read. The Olomana mauna and the Koʻolau’s nestle a 500-acre campus where young people farm kalo, work out, repair an age-old waʻa (canoe), obtain their GED,...
Helping Homeless Youth in Hawaiʻi
Originally shared on PBS Hawaiʻi's Home is Here series on Nov. 30 2022, click here to read. https://youtu.be/xqxnoOEJVbE Hawaiʻi’s homeless crisis is not new. And while outreach and services are often times focused on adults, there is a growing number of youth who are...
Kawailoa youth participate at Aspen Institute’s Opportunity Youth Forum Grantee Cross-site Convening
From November 8 to November 13, eight representatives from the Opportunity Youth Action Hawaiʻi (OYAH) programs participated in the cross-site convening held at the Hopi Tribe, New Mexico, and the Pueblo of Jemez. They heard from fellow Black, Indigenous People of...
Senate unanimously passes bill to include Native Hawaiian sexual violence survivors in funding
Originally shared on NBC News by Kimmy Yam on Nov. 18 2022, click here to read. “It happens to native groups. There is a certain invisibility … their issues are not necessarily focused on,” Hirono said in an exclusive interview with NBC News. Mazie Hirono on...
Kailua project that focuses on at-risk youth receives $20M award in global challenge
Originally shared on Hawaii News Now by Lynn Kawano on Oct. 12 2022, click here to read. https://vimeo.com/777526043/97302ce709 The Kawailoa Youth and Family Wellness Center will be getting a hefty infusion of cash over the next eight years. HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) -...
Nonprofit program to end youth incarceration awarded $20M
Originally shared on Pacific Business News by Kelsey Kukaua on Oct. 11 2022, click here to read. Michigan-based W.K. Kellogg Foundation has awarded Partners in Development Foundation $20 million dollars over an eight-year commitment for its project “Kawailoa: A...
OHA Board Chair Carmen Lindsey’s Statement on Racial Equity 2030 Challenge Awardee Kawailoa
Originally shared on Office of Hawaiian Affairs on Oct. 11 2022, click here to read. Today’s news that the Opportunity Youth Action Hawaiʻi collaborative at the Kawailoa Youth and Family Wellness Center has been named one of five...
Ending Youth Incarceration in Hawaii and Beyond
Originally shared on Now This News by Sara Michel on Oct. 11 2022, click here to read. https://youtu.be/H3ucNoHQTHw #ad In Hawai’i, young Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders are disproportionately represented in the juvenile justice system. The Partners in...
5 organizations awarded millions to advance racial equity across the globe within the decade
Originally shared on The Washington Post on Oct. 11 2022, click here to read. Racial equity is an idea that’s top of mind for many, both in the United States and globally. Rather than simply considering it, in honor of its 90th anniversary, the W.K. Kellogg...
Kellogg revolutionized breakfast, now his foundation may help change children’s lives
Originally shared on USA Today by Carli Pierson on Oct. 11 2022, click here to read. The Racial Equity 2030 challenge was open to those with ideas from across the globe. These are the five nonprofit organizations selected by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation....
Foundation makes global effort toward racial equity
Originally shared on ABC News on Oct. 11 2022, click here to view. https://youtu.be/FV4oAnth-Ls President and CEO of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation on the Racial Equity 2030 initiative and reveals five awardees who will split $80 million to go toward the future of racial...
Five awardees to receive $80 million to advance racial equity globally
Originally shared on the W.K. Kellogg Foundation by Javon Dobbs on Oct. 11 2022, click here to read. Today, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF) announced five awardees for its Racial Equity 2030 challenge, an open call for bold solutions to drive an equitable future...
Voices of Our Community
“Ke Kama Pono really changed my life. Not only in how I’m living now… I was up to the point where I really didn’t want to live anymore and they kind of gave me a reason to live… I’m more of a better person than I was before.”
– N. Momosea
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