August 2021 Newsletter
Recalibrating to Natural Rhythms
As we grow through our practices of aloha and kilo, we find ourselves drawn to rhythms in nature. For those who know our team and programs well, you know that we plan our projects and programs around our relationship with moon phases and celestial timings. On this Mauli moon, we release our last breath and reflect on the happenings and feels of the last malama. Mahalo nui to Tom Penna and Hō Mai Ka Pono for your guidance and insight.
(Photo by Luke Stackpoole on Unsplash)
Foundations of ALOHA hits double digits!
We are currently in our 10th cohort of our free Foundations of ALOHA (FOA) program, and are so grateful for the teachings and learnings of the past year. We just opened registration for Cohort 11, which will launch on September 12. We hope you can join us! Please register and share the information with interested others.
EI Book Nook
We invite you to join our Book Nook 2.0! Our team regularly selects books to read and discuss, which we have shared in the past via this newsletter. From here on out, we are selecting a book a month to read, with a debrief session on the last Tuesday of each month. We invite you to join our asynchronous Book Nook discussion doc at any point in your reading, and join the synchronous discussion at the end of the month as well. Please feel free to join wherever you might be in your book journey – even if you have not yet started! We are currently reading Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Our local libraries carry copies of the book if you would like to check it out. Our synchronous debrief for this book is August 31 at 12pm.
Last month, we read Nā Wāhine Kapu, Divine Hawaiian Women, by Lilikalā Kameʻeleihiwa. We have a few copies of this book that we can loan out and circulate; we invite you to read and contribute to our asynchronous Book Nook discussion at any point in your reading.
Entrepreneur’s Corner
We are excited to announce that our CEO Miki and Education Incubator have been selected for WE by Rising Tide, a Hawaiʻi-based accelerator program focused on supporting women entrepreneurs. Miki is among 20 women from seven different sectors of business across Hawaiʻi selected for this inaugural program; cohort member businesses are at least 51% women owned, have been in operation for at least three years, and bring in between $250,000 and $5 million in yearly revenue generation. WE by Rising Tide is funded by the Central Pacific Bank Foundation, the AIO Foundation, and was developed in partnership with the Patsy T. Mink Center for Business and Leadership.
Miki often refers to the tanomoshi system of family/community banking that she grew up with, which is also part of the moʻokūʻauhau of Central Pacific Bank, founded by nisei war veterans in 1954 to serve the Japanese-American community in Hawaiʻi who did not have adequate access to financial resources after the war ended. Their vision was to create a bank to provide for the needs of all the people of Hawaiʻi and help local families and small businesses who had been ignored by the traditional banking establishment.
H.O.P.E. Updates
Mahalo nui loa to the educators and content area leads who helped us test our Hawaiʻi Online Portal for Education (H.O.P.E.) modules these past few weeks. We are currently revising the modules for the next round of testing, as well as adding additional modules based on your recommendations. In the next few weeks, we are confirming the dates and times of various content institutes and workshops. If you have signed up to participate in HOPE but have not yet been notified of what content, focus, or other working group you have been invited to, please know that we are still in the process of forming the teams. Stay tuned for next steps!
Sharing Our Gratitude
Mahalo nui to Atherton Family Foundation for your support of our Foundations of Aloha program! Our beautiful FOA ʻohana continues to grow with generous support of organizations and individuals like you.
Connect with us on LinkedIn! Our organization is quite new to this space and we would love to hear from you on which aspects you enjoy the most. Also, any tips or tricks would be greatly appreciated as we continue to explore the space and seek the possibilities that LinkedIn has to offer. Mahalo in advance for sharing with us, we are looking forward to learning more about the space!
Growing Our Team
Please help us welcome Logan to our team!
With his family tracing their ancestral roots to the Japanese archipelago, Logan Narikawa is honored to be able to call Hawai’i his current Oceanic home. Logan holds a Masters in Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School and is a Ph. D. candidate in the American Studies department at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. His current research considers the relationships that have historically existed and might be obtained between settlers and Hawaiians in Hawaiʻi.
This sort of new father and husband is convinced that we must act with audacious courage in order to deliver a more hopeful, compassionate and healthy world to our children.
We also welcomed back our Chief Programs Officer Hye Jung to work this malama! Hye Jung is now joined by her new co-worker (and son), Hayden Ji Min Tano, who transitioned from pō to this realm of ao three months ago.
Hye Jung, Hayden and the rest of our EI team send love and aloha to all who are juggling childcare and work during these trying times.