We had 4 main goals for our Ka Pahohopu o Kawainui Summer Program:

1) To develop young aina leaders who have a sense of kuleana to work with and support their community.

2) To connect our youth to the aina, culture, values, and community of Kailua.

3) To restore and grow healthy relationship between people (kanaka) and place (aina) through the retelling of Kailua-specific stories, replanting and eating of our ancestral foods, and caring for the sacred sites, lands, and waters of Kailua.

4) To increase the number of youth who are studying, practicing, and promoting land-based, Hawaiian cultural knowledge, values, and skills unique to Kailua at storied places in our ahupuaa.

 

 

Through a combination of participant pre and post tests and makua surveys, our results for each goal came back as follows:

1) 97% Exceeded expectations, 3% met expectations

2) 100% Exceeded expectations

3) 100% Exceeded expectations

4) 100% Exceeded expectations

 

At the end of each session, participants held a hoike for their ohana to demonstrate what they learned and how they grew and accomplished the four main goals. This hoike consisted of feeding their ohana food they harvested, prepared, cooked in the imu, and kalo pounded into poi; hai moolelo - retelling traditional stories of the aina they are on; chanting ancestral chants; writing, developing, and chanting a chant telling the story of their summer; and sharing their group projects of canoe carving.