Today’s news that the Opportunity Youth Action Hawaiʻi collaborative at the Kawailoa Youth and Family Wellness Center has been named one of five international awardees of the W.K. Kellogg’s Racial Equity 2030 challenge – an open call for bold solutions to drive an equitable future for children, families and communities around the world – is a major win for Hawaiʻi and furthers the message that what is good for Hawaiians is good for all of Hawaiʻi.
Kawailoa’s orientation and adoption of Native Hawaiian practices and programming in its work with our most vulnerable youth, replacing incarceration with a Native Hawaiian restorative system that empowers communities and shifts resources to community-driven and culturally grounded sancutaries, is detailed in its entry titled “Kawailoa: A Transformative Indigenous Model to End Youth Incarceration in Hawaiʻi and Beyond.”
Hoʻomaikaʻi to Kawailoa Administrator Mark Patterson and the collaborative team members Partners in Development and its Kupa ʻĀina Farm, Kinai ʻEha, Hale Lanipōlua, Residential Youth and Services & Empowerment, Hawaiʻi Youth and Correctional Facility and Olomana School.
OHA was honored to share Markʻs vision for Kawailoa in 2021 in both print and video on its Ka Wai Ola News site. We also mahalo OHA videographer Jason Lees who worked with Mark to create a video for the Kellogg application. The five awardees will now share some $80 million in funding. The Kawailoa award of $20 million over the next eight years will go to Partners in Development as the financial umbrella, with funding going to support the cultural component for each program on the Kaiwailoa campus.
The other four international winners are:
For more, please visit https://kawaiola.news/hoonaauao/a-correctional-center-becomes-a-puuhonua/ and https://www.bizjournals.com/pacific/news/2022/10/11/nonprofit-awarded-20m.html
More information about the Racial Equity 2030 Challenge, the awardees, and the finalists can be found at wkkf.org/re2030.
