Ma Ka Hana Ka ʻIke: In Working, One Learns

By: Hauʻoli Kahaleuahi and Lipoa Kahaleuahi

Kamanu Lind is a father, husband, 4th generation farmer, and not long ago-appointed farm manager at Mahele Farm, Ma Ka Hana Ka ʻIke’s fully-operational natural and organic farm in Hāna, Maui.

Kamanu started his journey with Ma Ka Hana Ka ʻIke, an award-successful vocational education nonprofit for youth and graduates of our plans, back again in 2014 as a pupil apprentice at the farm.

Ma Ka Hana Ka ʻIke’s college student apprentices assortment in age involving 14 and 18, and span across our main system locations: Building & Construction, Mahele Farm, and Mālama Hāloa.

Students within Building & Design acquire experience in woodshop class and receive schooling in group-based construction assignments, this kind of as very small properties and cottages for the aged, option power programs, educational facilities for Hāna College, and other urgent group wants that come up.

Learners at Mahele Farm find out soil sciences, planting and harvesting cycles, foods security and produce distribution techniques, and other sustainable land administration and agriculture strategies. The farm creates about 2,000 lbs of produce every single thirty day period, 100% of which is distributed to our area group in this article in East Maui.

College students within just Mālama Hāloa turn into reconnected to Indigenous Hawaiian meals, like kalo (taro), and the cultural procedures encompassing them. Pupils also acquire experience in the protection and restoration of loʻi kalo (wetland taro fields), and the improvement and implementation of lifestyle-primarily based academic functions for their friends at Hāna University.

With the expertise and fingers-on abilities attained as a result of scholar apprenticeships, youth in Hāna have grown and made into comprehensive-time graduate apprentices and graduate instructors throughout our system parts. They get started mentoring and empowering up-and-coming university student apprentices, continuing the cycle of training tutorial subjects by means of real-daily life, arms-on application.

Like student apprentices just before him, Kamanu advanced in Ma Ka Hana Ka ʻIke. Following his college student apprenticeship at Mahele Farm, Kamanu made a decision to transition into the Mālama Hāloa method, which released in 2015.

Kamanu became a graduate apprentice, then a graduate teacher, and finally a manager within this software. He led lifestyle-dependent activities on campus, like educating the apply of pounding steamed kalo into poi or paʻiʻai (kalo combined with drinking water generates poi and kalo pounded devoid of water results in paʻiʻai). Kamanu’s leadership helped grow our organization’s intentional efforts to enhance students’ and families’ entry to these sacred conventional crops and foodstuff.

Rapidly forward to about just one calendar year ago, Kamanu felt the pull of returning to Mahele Farm, and a 2nd managerial situation was opening up. Kamanu was well prepared to be an ambassador for the farm’s mission.

Today, Kamanu is a Mahele Farm Manager, performing intently together with Mikala Minn, Mahele Farm Application Manager.

There is an ʻōlelo noʻeau, Hawaiian proverb or stating, “ʻAʻohe pau ka ʻike i ka hālau hoʻokahi.” This translates to, “All awareness is not taught in the exact same school” and “One can find out from quite a few resources.” At Ma Ka Hana Ka ʻIke, we know this to be genuine.

Youth of Hāna who participate in and evolve in the course of our packages are getting knowledge and abilities from numerous sources outside the house of the four walls of a classroom. They are rising into farmers feeding our community, carpenters developing secure housing for our people today, and cultural practitioners preserving our heritage and traditions.

About Ma Ka Hana Ka ʻIke:

Ma Ka Hana Ka ʻIke is an award-successful vocational instruction software for K-12 youth and graduates of our applications in Hāna, Maui—an isolated local community on the island’s east coastline with about two-thirds its inhabitants of Native Hawaiian ancestry.

Our technique is to train educational topics by means of actual-existence, palms-on application, wherever learners can have an understanding of the ideas they are finding out via tangible examples. Our assignments fulfill authentic school and local community requires, so our students’ instruction quickly serves people whose lives it touches.

Self-sustenance, neighborhood connection, cultural connection—these are some of the rules we intention to go onto the up coming technology, as we create caretakers of our future, leaders of our island.

Hauʻoli Kahaleuahi is the Neighborhood Outreach Coordinator and Lipoa Kahaleuahi is the Govt Director at Ma Ka Hana Ka ʻIke.