Farrington Excessive Faculty seniors J-Fow Eaz and Marcelo Osonis, who grew up in public housing in Kalihi, say KVIBE, a program the place they study to repair and restore donated bicycles, has supplied them a secure place to go after college.
“It supplies me knowledge from the employees,” stated Eaz, 17. “They educate me rather a lot. It supplies me a greater instance.”
The 2 had been amongst 200 or so Kalihi residents, younger and previous, who participated within the inaugural WE Are Kalihi Unity Stroll and Celebration meant to revive satisfaction locally and produce about constructive change.
Eaz defined what the occasion meant to him, saying, “Folks celebrating combined cultures, coming collectively joyful as a neighborhood. That is just the start.”
Kim Golis-Robello was beaming as she regarded upon the group.
“If we even received one neighborhood member it might have been successful,” stated Golis-Robello, a co- coordinator of the occasion, who’s with the nonprofit Dad and mom and Youngsters Collectively. “We wished to deliver the neighborhood collectively, which makes it so particular.”
She estimates about 150 children and adults walked from three totally different beginning factors via the neighborhood holding indicators expressing Kalihi satisfaction, ending at Kaewai Elementary Faculty on Kamehameha IV Highway, the place others joined in a vigorous celebration.
There they loved video games, music, line dancing, sports activities and donated treats together with popcorn, Spam musubi, pizza and drinks, in and across the college cafeteria.
One of many WE Are Kalihi motion’s targets is to vary folks’s attitudes to counteract the adverse portrayals of Kalihi on social media, in line with Lorrie Kanno, the Kalihi program director for Weed &Seed Hawaii, through which regulation enforcement officers work with enterprise and neighborhood members to scale back crime of their neighborhoods.
“So it takes altering folks’s views and grounding them again to what actually issues,” she stated. “It actually comes right down to folks and the way we deal with one another.”
Kanno and Golis-Robello stated they turned to members of the neighborhood to search out out what they thought might be executed to vary attitudes. Kanno stated they steered doing “one thing that’s constructive … as a result of sadly it’s the adverse stuff that captures everybody’s consideration, however there’s a lot good happening.”
Saturday’s occasion was a method “to indicate the neighborhood how a lot we love Kalihi.”
The neighborhood enthusiastically requested for an enormous honest on the finish of the stroll, and that’s what they received.
Dozens of organizations — governmental, non-public, nonprofit — contributed to the honest by their donations, participation and coordination.
Bryan Engichy, 17, one other Farrington senior and member of KVIBE (Kalihi Valley Tutorial Bike Trade), smiled ear-to- ear when sharing what he loved in regards to the day’s festivities. “The folks. The hospitality right here. Everyone’s my good friend. The music. I like it,” he stated.
Paulina Perman introduced 25 elementary-age kids to the occasion and was serving to them fill out types so they might get an ID card at a Honolulu Police Division sales space. One fourth grader requested “Mama Pau” whether or not she may get some popcorn. And when the occasion was practically over, Perman needed to collect them as much as take them residence in a van she makes use of to choose them up day by day after college at each Kalihi Valley and Kaewai Elementary faculties.
Perman is an after-school program trainer and neighborhood coordinator for Pacific Voices, underneath the umbrella of the nonprofit Kokua Kalihi Valley Complete Household Companies, a federally certified well being heart serving the world’s largely Asian and Pacific Islander inhabitants.
She typically takes the scholars out to weekend occasions the place they carry out cultural chants or songs, typically translated from Chuukese or Hawaiian into English, the widespread language of the scholars from households talking Chuukese, Pohnpeian, Marshallese, Lao, Samoan, Tongan, Filipino and Hawaiian.
Nuki Makasini, a younger program coordinator for KVIBE, which is also a part of Kokua Kalihi Valley, stated, “We’re utilizing bikes to navigate the world, like city canoes.”
The exercise promotes bodily actions and psychological well being.
He stated the group of about 20, principally boys, gathers at a location close to the Kalihi Police Station. Downstairs is the place they restore and refurbish bikes and upstairs is the place they meet.
Two College of Hawaii college students manned a sales space the place they handed out baggage of popcorn. The scholars, together with Tai-An Miao, a UH professor of psychology, are a part of an interdisciplinary program with the UH Workplace of Public Well being Research. It makes use of, amongst others, this system “Sources of Energy” to supply preventive psychological well being and coping expertise to stop suicide.
Additionally among the many taking part nonprofits was the Susannah Wesley Group Heart, which has after-school packages offering homework assist, enrichment actions and sizzling meals, and in addition has another studying program and a home-based parenting program.
