Momi Akana with children and staff of the Keiki O Ka 'Āina community center. - Photo: Liza Simon

Christmas at the
Extreme Makeover home

Momi Akana shares the story of how it all began

By Liza Simon | OHA Public Affairs Specialist

It's a few days before Christmas time at the Keiki O Ka 'Āina community center in Kalihi Valley, where every day is Christmas. So it has seemed, ever since last summer, when ABC TV's Extreme Makeover erected the stylishly wood-paneled community center and the adjacent dream home for Keiki O Ka 'Āina founder and director Momi Akana. It was hard to miss the nationally televised better-than-reality-show of the bricks-and-mortar miracle transformation accomplished by battalions of volunteers. They razed the rutted property and puka'd structures which Keiki O Ka 'Āina had only recently acquired under a state-funded grant and then in less than a week raised up two lovely Architectural Digest-looking edifices, which have helped Momi Akana – once a welfare mother of three – help more families.

Momi Akana pauses at the entry to her home. The staircase and chandelier were two of the more famous design elements incorporated by the Extreme Makeover crew when they built the home and learning community for the television show. - Photo: Blaine Fergerstrom

Six months after the Christmas-in-July hoopla, some of those families gather in the new community center to discuss the actual holiday season that is upon them: “This Christmas I'll be giving more time to my youngest child's learning of numbers and his reading,” explains Suzette Adversalo. Seated next to her is her sister Sharlene Spencer, who credits Keiki O Ka 'Āina for inspiring her to pursue computer and Hawaiian language classes in the New Year. “Being a good example by learning new things is the best present I can give my kids,” says Spencer.

Long before Extreme Makeover made a Santa-like gift to Keiki O Ka 'Āina, the sisters agree that this nonprofit agency has been a year-round Santa for their families. Their children are among the approximately 2,000 preschool Native Hawaiian children enrolled in free Keiki O Ka 'Āina programs located at seven sites on O'ahu and one on Maui. Most importantly, the sisters have been able to take advantage of special Keiki O Ka 'Āina parenting programs delivered in the home setting and in 35 community sites. They receive “parenting homework,” literacy activities and networking capabilities – summed up by Spencer: “When they say you are your child's first teacher, it means that every moment counts, but you need resources to help you make the most of your role. This is what Keiki O Ka 'Āina has given us.”

The Extreme Makeover crew built the family learning center across the lot from Akanaʻs home. - Photo: Blaine Fergerstrom

Keiko O Ka 'Āina mastermind Momi Akana says her passion for preschool education started way back when she was unable to afford many resources: “I know about being a stressed out single parent, looking for Section VIII housing, trying to get emergency assistance to pay the utility bills. If parents can't take care of basic needs, education won't get much attention in the home,” says Akana, who is part Native Hawaiian.

In the mid 1990s, Akana received on-the-job training as a preschool teacher under the federal welfare-to-work program – an eye-opening experience, she says: “All the research shows that from birth to 3 years, all the important brain connections are made.” She started growing her own preschool organization in 1996, after a defunct Kamehameha Schools program allowed her to use its curriculum and continue services to about 30 families in Waimānalo. She came to believe that the key for family-oriented Hawaiians is to make education an 'ohana affair. Long before Extreme Makeover came calling, Akana says she was able to turn her belief in early education into a thriving nonprofit business as the result of help from “every major Native Hawaiian organization plus blessings from God.”

Momi Akana's home, as seen from the entranceway to the Keiki O Ka 'Āina Community Center. - Photo: Blaine Fergerstrom

Akana first sought grant help in 1996 from OHA, where staff members still remember her presenting financial records – “ a shoebox of receipts,” for school items she had mostly purchased at garage sales. “As a single mom, I knew how to stretch resources and that first grant seemed like a gold mine,” Akana says with a laugh.

Akana sharpened her grant-writing skills, picked up a college degree in business and continued to shape nonprofit preschool programs that stress parental participation rounded out with Hawaiian cultural elements like 'ōlelo instruction and native values. However, by 2004, Akana felt the organization lacked something: “Every Native Hawaiian agency – especially if there is an education mission — should aspire to own land,” she says. “Hawaiians shouldn't have to go far to be in a lo'i patch or take part in cultural gathering rites.” Thus was born the Keiki O Ka 'Āina plan for an outdoor classroom and a community center. This marked a new turn of events for Keiki O Ka 'Āina.

“Akana's concept of a community center really fit in with economic development because it involved creating jobs and sustained economic activity that has the potential to generate commerce to benefit the entire state,” says Art Mori of OHA's Economic Development Hale. Mori believed that Akana's vision of a land base for Keiki O Ka 'Āina could also free up the organization from constantly chasing after the yearly renewal of grants so it would have a better chance of becoming a stable contributor to the state economy.

The ever multitasking Momi Akana couldn't agree more. After consulting with Mori, she applied for and received OHA economic development funds to pay for a full-time staff person, who would take on the duty of finding the real estate for a Keiki O Ka 'Āina community center. Akana credits her new hire – Kanoe Naone for sleuthing out 3.3 verdant acres for sale by a church in Kalihi Valley and then lining up Keiki O Ka 'Āina parents who testified to state legislators about the preschool's magic touch in helping them use early education to improve their families' lives, even as the state's economic pressures have mounted. Lawmakers provided $2 million for a grant-in-aid, which went a long way toward the total purchase price of $2.7 million for the land. “God's hand was upon us,” says Akana.

But so was a lot of work.

Staff found this out as they moved in to the Kalihi site and began to plan the new center: “If you turned on the microwave, the computers would go out. There was flooding every day and mold everywhere. The wooden doors were so warped, we could only close them by screwing in 2-by-6 boards every night,” says Akana, who dutifully got back to her old job of grinding away at grant applications to pay for some capital improvements plus raise funds for the $700,000 balance still owed for the cost of the land beneath the ramshackle structures.

The lobby of the Keiki O Ka 'Āina Community Center is decked out for Christmas. - Photo: Blaine Fergerstrom

This is when some staff happened to notice in the newspaper that ABC's Extreme Makeover was inviting Hawai'i residents to apply for the program's mega-fix-it. Almost as a joke, they responded, figuring they would never get picked. Then they got the call from Hollywood. Before making the final selection, the show's producers came to Hawai'i looking to videotape people who could tell the Keiki O Ka 'Āina story in their own compelling words, with the dual intent of building new digs not only for the nonprofit agency but also for an individual family associated with the organization. “So they asked us for 15 bios of people in the organization, and do we ever have some touching stories. We hire from the community we serve. We train and help our people, but many start with sickness, drug addiction and abuse,” says Akana.

On a March morning, much to Akana's surprise, it was her own 'ohana tabbed to move from a modest Kalihi home down the road and receive the gift of a luxuriant island-style home next to what would be a marvelous new community center and outdoor classroom on the acreage that belongs to the Keiki O Ka 'Āina nonprofit organization.

Akana says the Extreme Makeover show was just a housewarming for the community development to come in 2008. Much depends literally on seeds that have just been planted. Looking around the lush green grounds in Kalihi, she discusses her hopes for the outdoor garden/classroom. Definitely, she will be working with medicinal and horticultural experts for “value-added” activities such as classes in lei-making, where lei instructors can also sell their creations. Keiki O Ka 'Āina will also be fundraising to build yet another free preschool next to the new community center and outdoor classroom. There will be plenty more job openings here for teachers of classes in 'ōlelo and Hawaiian culture, too. With the gift of the Extreme Makeover house, Akana, who is now married and gave birth to her fourth child last year, says she is working on plans to privately pay off the balance of the mortgage not funded by the state grant that purchased the Kalihi land for Keiki O Ka 'Āina.

“In the last 11 eleven years, Keiki O Ka 'Āina has received $22 million in funding for family-based early education,” says Akana. While acknowledging that it's exceptional for a small nonprofit to receive so much, Akana says it's spurred her determination to keep thinking of new ways to give back. “It is an honor to serve the families we serve. We help them give the gift of early education. Their dedication is the gift that money can't buy.”