News Release
Office of Hawaiian Affairs
Yesterday’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.
Office of Hawaiian Affairs 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 Office of Hawaiian Affairs 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:
- The SETA Project: Transformative Anti Racist Education Systems in Brazil
- Healing Through Justice: A Community-Led Breakthrough Strategy for Healing-Centered Communities in Illinois, U.S.A.
- Indigenous Lands Initiative: Securing Land Ownership Rights for Indigenous Communities in Mexico and Central and South America
- Overcoming Environmental Racism by Knowing, Using and Shaping Law in Kenya, Sierra Leone and the U.S.
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
About the Office of Hawaiian Affairs
Established by the state Constitutional Convention in 1978, OHA is a semi-autonomous state agency mandated to better the conditions of Native Hawaiians. Guided by a board of nine publicly elected trustees, OHA fulfills its mandate through advocacy, research, community engagement, land management and the funding of community programs. Learn more at www.oha.org.
