Support HAPA’s Work this Giving Season!
We hope you had a restful holiday filled with gratitude for good company and good food, along with the acknowledgment of and education around the colonization of indigenous peoples and lands in Hawaiʻi and North America that led to both Thanksgiving and Lā Kūʻokoʻa.
This holiday season, we want to encourage you to gear up for this busy time and the upcoming legislative session by making sure you take care of yourself!
A recent Kuleana Academy graduate and Community Organizer for Pesticide Action Network, Lorilani Keohokalole-Torio said it best during one of our Poisoning Paradise Film Festival Panels (hosted in partnership with Uprooted and Rising and Herbicide Free Campus):
Many of us in this work, whether donor, advocate, leader, or organizer, can often feel stretched thin from giving of our time, money, passion, and expertise.
Though I feel privileged to do this work everyday, we need to give more people the opportunity to serve and to support the fight for a better Hawaiʻi.
We believe in building and growing a base of donors, advocates, organizers and leaders who can all work together across issue areas to maximize the impact of our work - while also organizing to build movements and advocating for change. As more and more people join in, the responsibility on each of us is lessened, our impact grows and the more lasting and meaningful change we can make.
Illustration by Ashley Lukashevsky for HAPA
We do this work by using a multifaceted approach of EDUCATION, ORGANIZING & ADVOCACY.
Join us in this work by supporting if you can and in whatever ways you can. To take action you can: follow us on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, keep up with calls to action and important bills, or donate today to help us reach our goal of $10,000 by 12/31!
Through education, we are able to build a bench of informed and dedicated leaders who are prepared to engage in organizing and advocacy for themselves and their communities. Through organizing, we build long term movements to make lasting change. Our policy advocacy provides timely and informative calls to action so our communities can weigh in on a range of social, environmental and economic issues at the county and state level.
Our Kuleana Academy graduates are beautiful examples of how these three strategies work together to achieve progress. Hear from our youngest 2021 graduate, Cardenas Pintor about their leadership journey:
“As a student from Farrington High School that has helped support many campaigns and political issues, HAPA’s Kuleana Academy has helped me learn more about campaigning and many issues that I believe are substantial in Kalihi-Kapālama. After helping campaign for the establishment of the Honolulu Youth Commission in 2020, I was appointed to be a part of it in 2021 by Council Member Radiant Cordero. I am now more aware of what I could do to not just help my community, but how to help the island of Oʻahu. I am honored to be a Kuleana Academy graduate and I am glad to be the first high schooler to graduate from Kuleana Academy!”
JOIN US, CARDENAS & OTHERS LIKE THEM!
We are working to raise $10,000 by 12/31 to continue our important education, organizing and advocating work. Please give today if you can, or take action by following us on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter or by joining our email list.