The 2023 Mālama Hāloa summer program will provide full-time paid apprenticeships to youth in East Maui from June 5, 2023-July 14, 2023. Youth participants will earn $12/hr and an additional $2.50/hr tool award credit that can be accumulated over their high school period. Native Hawaiian youth participants will participate in a wide variety of activities including loʻi restoration, stream maintenance, operational management of a kalo farm, farmer community service projects, and weekly kuʻi ʻai activities that will provide paʻiʻai to native Hawaiian kūpuna in East Maui. In itʻs 6th year, the Mālama Hāloa summer program will seek to inspire the next generation of students to honor and cherish our ancestral spaces. This project will seek to continue our loʻi restoration efforts in Wailua Nui with a partnership with the Wendt (Akiona) ʻohana. Led by Ed and Ryan Wendt, who are both lineal descendants of Wailua Nui, youth will learn about the history of Wailua Nui and the political, ecological and economic forces that have shaped this small kalo farming community. Currently stewarding 31 loʻi kalo and leading our loʻi restoration efforts, Ryan Wendt, will help our youth learn about the importance of the work that will need to be done in Wailua Nui, in order to accomplish a full restoration of the 150+ acre loʻi kalo complex.

 

Youth participants will be provided with apprenticeship pay, training, equipment, transportation and daily meals. Participants will report to Hāna school each day at 7:30 am and will be back at the school by 3:30 pm each day. In addition, all meals will be gathered, harvested and or cooked by our youth participants. In addition to our Hāloa related activities, youth will also engage in our our Kahu ʻAi Pono program which provides culinary and food service industry training on the Hāna School campus. During the first week and mid-way through the summer program, youth will spend an entire day working with our kumu Kahu ʻAi Pono, Babette Lopez, in our certified kitchen in order to learn how to safely batch cook delicious meals for the summer program. We believe that teaching our youth to grow kalo is important, but it is also important to help them learn how to prepare other delicious foods that can be eaten with their paʻiʻai each week. Feeding community and teaching youth how to feed their ʻohana are important aspects of the work that we do at Ma Ka Hana Ka ʻIke. In this program we will teach youth skills and techniques to cook ono food and then to create "Fast-food-esque" systems that will help show our youth what it takes to truly eat from the ʻāina on a daily basis. We also hope that by introducing these concepts we can ensure that our youth are excited to continue to grow, prepare, eat and share our local foods.

 

Interested ʻohana and students can email kokua@hanabuild.org for more information. Please note that housing is not provided for this program and this program is only available to current students at Hāna High School or students who have housing accommodations already established in Hāna.