APHN ProgramCulture Of Health

The name of Kapaʻalana kind of speaks to the salt and light of the earth. So the idea was that salt in the Hawaiian culture was a healer and it provided healing to all people and the light provided hope for a brighter day, a brighter future. And in creating the name there's this theory that everybody is born with a bowl of light and throughout your life with adverse experiences or financial difficulties, domestic violence, drug abuse, being born into poverty, little rocks are placed upon your bowl and it starts to cover the light that you have within you. And the hope was that Kapaʻalana would go into communities and work with at-risk families and children especially who are vulnerable to these experiences and remove those rocks and eventually help them to shine their light through.

We serve families on the Leeward Coast, yeah. We serve all families. We, our main goal is to be accessible and accepting of everybody you know. And we want everyone to be to feel important and so especially our at risk and our homeless families. So when they come to us, what we want to do is make everyone comfortable first of all, and feel like they belong and then from there we teach them. We help them with whatever their needs are right. So if they come to us and they need housing, if they come to us and they need food, if they need whatever it is that they need, we provide as their preschool. You know we have the resources to help them. In the parenting side, I think just and pushes them to do better for themselves.being in a class together and having that sense of belonging really helps you feel a part of something and it it kind of gives them inspiration

And the hope for that is that we're going to the people that need these services. We’re working in the communities, in the areas with the population of families who don't have transportation who can't, you know the simple thing, like I can't drive, get in the car and drive my child to preschool.

So our preschools pop up all over the leeward coast. One of our areas is the boat harbor currently and I think the beauty about that site is we’re going into this village out in the boat harbor and we’re working with families who most times don’t have the trust that they need. So there are so many support sites along the leeward coast but it’s hard for them to develop that trust with these programs. Because it really takes a certain type of patience. An undying love to work with families who have been living on the beach and in this poverty-stricken area for years.

And so, our position in that is to go to them and just ask them what they need, how we can help them. There’s no pressure to attend the preschool. Do you need food? Do you need blankets? Do your babies need a homemade toilet? How can we help you? And just gaining that trust with them and building that relationship. Our hope is that investment will get them to a place where they understand that we want what’s best for them and that they build that mutual bond with us. And they eventually attend the preschools.

And I think that's so crucial in our community because our people want to trust you first before they can accept the services. So what’s nice is we, the Kapaʻalana style is very not abrasive, and it’s not invasive. It’s just very Hawaiian, you know, we stay at the door we wait for you to welcome us and when you're ready we will come in and we will do and give what we have.

You know when I think of health, I see a thriving group of people in a community. I see happy people. I see people who are stable and just aware of themselves. They have good self-esteem. They feel empowered. They have access to services. They have access to education. I just see a community that understands how important it is to rely on one another and that can thrive through that.

So, for example, Kapaʻalana I feel how we invest in health for our communities is we provide education. Whether it be health education, early childhood education, parental classes. We’re making that investment in the community because you know that’s something that they can carry on forever, right? We can give them supplies. We can drop them off at the hospital. We can say go to your doctor. We can say take this shot. But if there’s no education behind it. If there’s no reason, no motivation. It’s not gonna be a sustained long-term thing for our families. And so how we tackle that, and what it means to me, and I know what it means to our program, is investing in educating our community. And hoping that’s something that they can carry on and educate others on, like networking.

I think we focus and and it's not a bad thing but we focus on our kids preschool and but what we tend to forget that the community is that when they leave school they go home to their parents and their and we have great awesome teachers but that's a certain time when really the constant in their life in that child's life is their parents and the parent is going to be there at least to 18. You think they were going to be there forever right so they're their primary educator their primary support. There's going to be there to cheer them on to teach them all the things that we're not going to teach them and I think it is really important for the parents to understand that role say hey you're you're important you know. You are so important you should probably focus a little on yourself so you can there to be of the main support for your child and I think that is great because we build relationships. We don't just teach the kids, we teach the parents that they can work together. We build families.

So when they come to school and I can help them with maybe with job application or if I can help them say someone is saying. I really want to learn how to better take care of my children. I want to be a better parent than I can have a parenting class or right now we’re focused a lot on our health, great
So how do I maybe inspire them to serve others? We teach them things that are important to them and I feel naturally that they’re going to share that. If they found something valuable than that was naturally they would share it. But we also do a lot of community service. So October is domestic violence awareness month. We spent a lot of time talking about it because it does affect our families. I mean if we are being honest and real, everyone has been affected by domestic violence. So in that month, we talked about how we can support how we can be there for victims or we know family members. But we also did was we created posters. We made domestic violence posters and we actually did sign waving. It really empowered them. They felt really good about it and I think they realized that that was something so small. We had a huge impact because after that people were coming up to them and said, hey I saw you, that was such a great thing that you did. And they think it’s inspiring and it empowers them to do more for the community of in the community.

There’s a plethora of variety of partners that we work with. We work with a lot of Native Hawaiian foundation, we work with OHA, we work with Kamehameha Schools, public health nursing, HPU. Oh gosh, the UH Manoa Health System. We bring in a lot of early childhood advocates. I can’t really think of all of them off the top of my head but just people who genuinely care about the community. We work with other community partners that are doing the type of work that we do. So In Peace is one of them. Keiki o Ka ʻAina. All of these programs that are investing in the community the same way we do.

You know, I’m thankful to be here to speak on behalf of our program. It’s always an honor for me because I really believe in the mission and I think that what I love about this work and what we do and what a lot of people who are working in the public system, right? Or the social services systems, are working with at-risk and needy families and poverty families is this idea that it's greater than oneself. It's so much greater than one person and one program and no one's out there for themselves, right? We're not there to make the greatest profit because we’re nonprofit. We're there to make the greatest impact.