The Partners in Development Foundation recently received a $10,000 grant from Hawaiian Electric to continue the Resilience Hub in Kohala, a project under the Pili a Pa‘a program that provides a safe space for keiki who are doing distance learning because of the COVID-19 pandemic and whose caregivers are unable to supervise them.

The project launched in September 2020 and successfully allowed children to participate in distance learning and parents to re-enter the workforce.

The Resilience Hub prioritized assisting Kohala school complex teachers who do not have access to affordable or reliable child care for their children who have to continue distance or hybrid learning. The project supported teachers and other parents, largely in the service industry, to work instead of taking a leave of absence to care for their children.

“Kohala does not have a large pool of teacher candidates or substitute teachers, so the schools would have been short-handed and may not have been able to provide quality education to the students,” said Ross Pagat, Pili A Pa‘a community school manager.

When online schooling is done for the day, Resilience Hub staff coordinate extracurricular activities such as archery, gardening, cooking and 3-D printing.

The project also promotes more than just emotional and physical health; the hub allows for keiki in the community to socialize, problem solve, follow instructions and learn ways to give back to their families.

Not only that, but the Resilience Hub served as a center for adults who needed help getting connected with services that dealt with alcohol and drug recovery.

The grant enabled the project to continue this work of connecting and assisting Kohala community members with critical services.

The Partners in Development Foundation is a nonprofit public charity that inspires and equips families and communities for success and service, using timeless Native Hawaiian values and traditions.

For additional information or to learn more about the Partners in Development Foundation and Resilience Hub, get online and visit pidf.org.

The grant will go to PIDF’s latest project, Piha me ka Pono, a new initiative at the Kohala Schools Complex on Hawaiʻi Island that cultivates partnerships to bring needed academic, health, and social support services for the students and their families.

“The Complex’s three schools are Title I eligible and it has been recognized that so many of the students are coming to school with excess baggage,” says Alison Masutani, PIDF Vice President of Operations and the Program Manager for Pili a Paʻa. “Unless we help to remove that baggage, no matter how strong the instruction is, the students will have difficulty learning.”

That ‘baggage’ Masutani is referring to includes poverty, food insecurity, and poor physical, mental or emotional health. One of the Project’s goals is to increase academic achievement of disadvantaged and under-served students through the development of after school enrichment programs that provide positive alternatives for students’ free time. Support from the Nā ʻŌiwi Kāne Fund will go towards two different mentorship programs: sports conditioning and music.

The Piha me ka Pono Project is an offshoot of the existing Pili a Paʻa program, which was created to build teachers’ skills in instructional delivery in order to raise student achievement, particularly for the Native Hawaiian students, and it is also at the Kohala Schools Complex.

The Hawaiʻi Community Foundation (HCF) is a 501(c)(3) public charity with over 100 years of community service and is the leading philanthropic institution in the state of Hawaiʻi. HCF is a steward of nearly 800 funds – including more than 200 scholarship funds – created by donors who desire to transform lives and improve communities. HCF distributes over $47 million charitable dollars to support improvements in our local communities annually. HCF also serves as a resource on community issues and trends in the nonprofit sector. For more information, visit their website.

“Pili A Pa’a was a blessing for me as a brand new teacher. I now have a greater sense of how to structure my lessons, reach ALL of my students, and how to incorporate rigor at all levels of learning. Without the time at Pili A Pa’a I don’t know if I would have felt nearly as confident as I do now, nor would I have had the time or opportunity to learn these things.”