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ResourcesHale HalawaiAustin Hattox:Today, we're going to be speaking with Mina Morita, board president of Hale Halawai 'Ohana O Hanalei. Mina, Welcome to the show.Mina Morita:Thank you, Austin. Thank you for having me.Austin Hattox:For those in our audience who aren't already familiar, could you talk a little about Hale Halawai and what you guys do?Mina Morita:Okay. Hale Halawai is a community center in the town of Hanalei on the Island of Kauai in Hawaii. And what happened was in the 1980s, a pretty major hurricane hit Kauai and the elders at that time realized that there weren't any public areas where people could convene easily. There was a school. There was an old courthouse. But not building that the community had total control over. So the discussions actually had started happening in early 1980s after Hurricane Iwa. Finally around 1993, the first building for Hale Halawai 'Ohana O Hanalei was built, but that was after Hurricane Iniki, another major hurricane, which really emphasized the need for a community gathering place.Mina Morita:So Hale Halawai 'Ohana O Hanalei, its meaning is within its name. Hale means house. Halawai is to gather. Ohana is family and Hanalei, So the families of Hanalei. So the name literally means a house for gathering the families of Hanalei. The nonprofit began in 1993 and opening its first building and given this name and its mission is to create a gathering place for cultural education and for community engagement and actions to support social civic and recreational events to perpetuate the value of Aloha and the betterment of our community. And Hale Halawai was the first nonprofit community center in the state of Hawaii.Austin Hattox:What are some of the major programs or events that Hale Halawai typically organizes in order to accomplish that mission?Mina Morita:One of the major projects of Hale Halawai was an annual summer program called the Hawaiian Cultural Explorations Program, where we run a six week program. And again, it's for fun activities, but mainly to learn the cultural aspect of Kauai. And so that was a main program led by one of our board members, Naomi Yokotake, who is also a founding board member. The facilities is used for a variety of activities. We have veteran outreach programs, a homeschool uses our facility several times a week to gather their students, AA meetings. We have a certified kitchen that leaked into we have a weekly farmer's market. So for value added products, they can be prepared in the kitchen and sold at the market.Mina Morita:We've held classes for the community in conjunction with the local community college here. And some of these classes have been just for basic computer skills, like learning how to use QuickBooks or better at Google or Excel spreadsheets. Those kinds of skills. We have a big supporter in a couple that teaches slack key guitar. So they have weekly concerts. But things are in flux right now because of COVID-19 and gathering practices and social distancing. So we're a little bit more mindful on the kinds of activities that can take place indoors and trying to see how we can transition in its use as we deal with the situation.Austin Hattox:Right. I definitely want to explore you guys' COVID response, but I'm struck by the different types of supports that you provide your community. It sounds like there's a lot of programs that fulfill a need that are separate. It's interesting how you have classes for computer skills and then also AA meetings and veteran outreach and homeschool. How did you guys come to provide so many different types of support for your community?Mina Morita:Well, I think the common thread here is that all of these different kinds of programs needed a place to conduct their activities. And so that's what we provide, that house or that meeting site where it's accessible to the community.Austin Hattox:So you guys serve as the hub where people can congregate and actually participate in these different programs that need a place where people can go.Mina Morita:Yeah. Primarily our major programs are the summer program and the farmer's market and providing the computer skills classes or training. So those are some of the programs that the organization has developed and where the rest of them are other programs where they just use our facilities.Austin Hattox:Okay. And you said you are located in Kauai Island?Mina Morita:Yes. On the North shore of Kauai Island and the Hale Halawai, we like to say it's located in the heart of Hanalei. So right in the center of the town.Austin Hattox:And what's the population of your community?Mina Morita:Oh, let's see. We're in such transition. So I'm not absolutely sure, but it's probably about 1000, but it's from Hanalei to eight miles out to the end of the road. So just in that section.Austin Hattox:That's super cool. And I could definitely see with more of a smaller community that having this place for people to congregate and see... I'm sure you guys are a way for people to find out what programs or what is going on in terms of your community.Mina Morita:We're trying. When it was started in 1993, definitely there were far fewer resources during that period. We had a school and we had a court house and the public use of those two buildings were pretty much limited to the evenings, if available at all. It's been almost 30 years and the community has grown. It has transitioned from basically an agricultural town with work outside of the area, into one of the must go places to stay on the island and becoming more tourist oriented. So the demographics of the community has changed a lot. And it's going through some pretty dramatic social transitions right now, or at least the last two decades.Austin Hattox:On that note of transitioning, how has COVID changed how you guys normally operate?Mina Morita:Really, most of our programs have stopped, have been paused because of the social distancing needs. And it's put us in a flux, because we were pretty self sufficient with income that we generated from the farmer's market and the user fees for the facilities. We have paid staff. We have an executive director. We have people that help with the farmer's market, especially with parking, directing people. We have a market manager. So we're very cognizant about our revenue decline and adjusting budgets and put on pause some expansion programs just to keep afloat right now.Austin Hattox:That makes total sense. A lot of the value you provide is kind of in person based.Mina Morita:Exactly. I think that is a challenge for so many nonprofits because it's providing a need and usually that need includes a face to face contact.Austin Hattox:Have you guys made any effort or explored any of the solutions for, obviously, some things wouldn't work in an online environment, but stuff like maybe holding AA meetings online or transitioning some of those meetings that were in person?Mina Morita:Yes. For example, the AA meetings went to an online format and I believe that they're still doing that. They're not meeting in person. Veterans outreach is a little different because usually it's just one on one types of meetings. So that's a little bit more doable. I don't believe the homeschool has come back yet. We've been allowed to reopen the farmer's market and mainly because it's an outdoor venue. And so, again, outdoor venue, practicing social distancing and masks required, but the difficulty with the farmer's market is it catered a lot to tourists. And so definitely the activity at the farmer's market is down. We've offered to the slack key concert to hold their concert outdoors. On our campus, we have one main building and we also have, it's called the halau, but it's an outdoor structure, open air structure with a thatched roof where we have picnic tables and stuff. So that's another area that can be used.Austin Hattox:Yeah. So it sounds like you guys are trying to fill in the cracks as best as possible because this is a big shock to the system for all nonprofits, but for you guys trying to move some of this stuff so that people can continue to operate in maybe 80% capacity of what was going on previously.Mina Morita:Yeah. I don't think it's even at 80%, we're like at 50%.Austin Hattox:Would you say some of the adoption to moving to an online format is more difficult within your community or are people typically kind of receptive to that?Mina Morita:We're almost completing a survey, talk about technology and created a Google form to survey our farmers, our vendors at farmer's market and small businesses in the area to assess what the needs are right now. And if they were interested in taking classes in person, we were gifted about 30 laptops by Facebook. So we have the ability to either start a loan program or to conduct classes within our facilities. But again, should we conduct these classes, taking into account social distancing, and making sure that the classes are small enough to accommodate social distancing and minimize risk?Austin Hattox:And are you guys still in the process of collecting that survey data?Mina Morita:Yeah, I think we're right at the end. It's been out for a couple of weeks, reaching out not only to our farmers and vendors, but going broader to anybody that has their own business, own small business, and again, to assess needs.Austin Hattox:I like that approach where you're trying to meet people where they are and understand expectations and make the best of a not ideal situation.Mina Morita:Yeah. If you asked me 20 years ago, I think it was pretty easy to identify the community needs and meet those expectations. But now it's a little bit more difficult.Austin Hattox:Yeah. I believe that for sure.Mina Morita:Yeah. We don't want to create programs when there isn't a need, just because we think the program should exist.Austin Hattox:So what is one tech tool or website that you and your team have started using in the past year?Mina Morita:I think it's been a little bit more than a

ResourcesAccesSurfAustin Hattox:Today, we're going to be speaking with Cara Short, Executive Director of AccesSurf. Cara, welcome to the show.Cara Short:Thanks Austin. I'm pretty excited to be here.Austin Hattox:For those in our audience who aren't already familiar, could you talk a little about AccesSurf and what you guys do?Cara Short:Yeah, well, we're a program on the island of Oahu in Hawaii and we do programs for people with disabilities and their adaptive water sports programs. So basically what that means is providing beach access and then support for surfing, swimming, canoeing, paddle boarding, whatever kind of water sports. I mean, not whatever kind of water sport, but a lot of different water sports. So we call it adaptive because it just basically means that we've had to modify things, whether it's the equipment or how the individual might surf or paddle or swim. So that's, in a nutshell, what we do.Austin Hattox:Yeah, that's fascinating. And I really love how fun your mission is. It's really unique. Where did the idea originate and how did you guys get started?Cara Short:Well, it started in 2006, a pretty simple concept. Mark Marble, who's one of our co founders, he's a recreational therapist and he'd been working with people post-injury to transition back into life. And his emphasis has always been on sports as therapy and what have you, because that's what his background is. And he was realizing that here we are living in Hawaii, surrounded by this beautiful beach and water, and he was not seeing people going to the ocean as part of their therapy or be transitioned back into their life.Cara Short:So he started asking around and basically the response was that there just wasn't any way. There wasn't a way to access the beach, meaning get across the sand and people needed support when they got into the water. And he had heard of some sort of similar type programs, but not specifically with surfing. So then he met an adaptive athlete named Rich Julian, and Rich is a local boy here who was injured, I think when he was 15 or 17. And he was a surfer prior to his injury. So they partnered together and worked with many rehab therapists and doctors and different people on the island, life guards and so on and so forth, and came up with AccesSurf.Cara Short:And it was born out of the fact that there was a need for it really. And just the simplest concept that people weren't getting to the beach and getting into the water. So, as I said, it started in 2006. Their very first day was a small day. They called it Day at the Beach, which is the name we use for our main program to this day. I think they had something like maybe five participants, with probably five or six volunteers. And needless to say, it just went like wildfire. It was an amazing experience for everybody. And it just blossomed after that. And more and more people got involved. And now we were just tallying up the amount of programs we did last year and individual program days, including special events. We did something like 60 program days last year. So from a small day at the beach with a few people, it's grown quite a bit in the last 13 years.Austin Hattox:What programs do you guys put on to accomplish this mission?Cara Short:So we have a few. And this is all of course, prior to our current situation. We are doing some restructuring to figure out what everyone's new normal looks like. So basically our two main monthly programs, one is called Day at the Beach, and that is the first Saturday of every month. They're all a lot of fun, obviously. I agree with you. I think our mission is a lot of fun too. I have to agree with you on that.Cara Short:So Day at the Beach is a day that anyone can come, any disability, any age, and their families. And we all meet at the beach. We set up what I call a little AccesSurf city. So we set up this whole area with beach mats and special beach chairs, like beach wheelchairs that can go on the sand and in the water. And then we have a ton of equipment that we use, like with specialized boards and pads and all these different things. A lot of duct tape. I always kind of make a joke about that, but it's true. We use a lot of duct tape, and basically we have a force of volunteers that will come out.Cara Short:So this is a crazy thing. Every month, we will have this program and we can see, I mean, on a small day, probably about 50 participants, but more regularly at 60, 70, 80 participants, depending on the time of year, and about 200 volunteers. So it's pretty incredible to see that kind of support. So we get together, and one thing I want to note about that is we have a swimming area and then we have a surfing area, which the majority of the people that come to Day at the Beach were tandem surfing with them. So we're actually on the surf board with the participants.Cara Short:But many people, they'll start a Day at the Beach and then they'll become more independent and learn more skills, and I'll talk about the clinics and different ways that people can do that in a minute. But what I want to say is, the interesting part is, what we've realized over the years, the big part about our Day at the Beach is really the getting together part. It's the community. We have people come that don't even get in the water, that for whatever reason that particular day, they might not be able to get in the water, or they just don't feel like it, but they still want to come because they're included. And our whole community is very, very focused on inclusion. So that's a lot of fun. We talk story, have a barbecue, it's just a fun day.Cara Short:And then the third Wednesday of every month, we have a much smaller program that's called Wounded Warrior Day at the Beach. And it's a mini version of what I just described to you. Here on Oahu specifically, too, we have many different military bases, so we work with a lot of the different rehab groups here, and they come out for a surfing day. It's a much smaller event, like I said, it's a little bit more like bigger surf lesson kind of style, where the majority of our participants do tend to have post-traumatic stress or traumatic brain injury. We have all the equipment there for anyone that might have a physical injury, but we do tend to see with that particular program more traumatic stress and traumatic brain injury more often.Cara Short:And then we have quarterly clinics. So we do a swim, a surf, and now a six-man outrigger canoe program. And each of those are smaller than our Day at the Beach, actually even smaller than our Wounded Warrior. And those are like, I don't want to say next level, because some people might just go to the clinics, but it provides a different kind of an opportunity, where we can really work with the individual, with their comfort, with their skill.Cara Short:So, you come to Day at the Beach and it's beyond fun. It's just so, so much fun, so much excitement and tons of people. And it's really great. But if you're like, "Hey, I really want to be able to surf on my own," or what have you, well then we really recommend people come to our clinics so that we can really spend some time working with them individually. So we like to try to be able to provide several different opportunities for people.Cara Short:But in addition to that, we also do have a competitive adaptive surf team that competes locally and nationally and internationally. And we also ourselves host a rather large international adaptive surf competition annually in Waikiki. And last year I believe we had something like 85 surfers from 16 different countries. So we're kind of all over the place doing all kinds of stuff.Austin Hattox:That is so interesting. It seems like there's this whole ecosystem that just wasn't on my radar at all.Cara Short:Right. And I'll tell you, we're quite a force. And it's really interesting. The other thing that I think is also really, really a cool experience for me being part of AccesSurf is seeing how many people get involved, and you don't even have to be a surfer or even a person that likes to get into the water if you want to get involved. And I mean that from a participant standpoint, but also as a volunteer. That's what's been really cool is we have people come from all over the island, every background you could imagine, just because it's so much fun to be together and sharing and enjoying life.Cara Short:And the other side of it, the thing that we've really enjoyed watching grow out of this is the bringing more awareness for people with disabilities, which then just directly affects how our society is set up. We're not actively involved with advocacy as such, other than leading by example. And we've already noticed in these two years that things are starting to change. Like we're getting beach mats put in at certain beaches that can accommodate it, and things like that. I think that's making a really big difference. So we feel pretty happy to see that growth in our community.Austin Hattox:How do you guys make some of these activities and beach participation more accessible?Cara Short:So for us, a lot of the things that we do... Well, actually, that's a good question. There are several things. There's the physical side of things. So you get to the beach and of course the sand is somebody's greatest barrier if you're in a wheelchair. So we have these mats, they're quite heavy duty. They're like a woven nylon beach mats. So we put down a bunch of those, is our main thing, so people can get down onto the beach and access the water. Some people get into the water themselves, but we also have, like I said, this beach chair. It's called a Mobi-Chair and it can float and can go on the sand. So that's how we can help people get in and out of the water. And then of course, the equipment that we're using, it's a lot of modified and custom surf boards that have handles or special padding or different things like that.Cara Short:But then the other thing that we really focus o

Resources:Aloha HarvestAustin Hattox:Today we're going to be speaking with two guests from Aloha Harvest, Leslie Pyo, community resource coordinator, and Jay Purvis, data and communication specialist. Guys, welcome to show.Leslie Pyo:Thank you. Jay Purvis:Hello, thanks for having us.Austin Hattox:For those in our audience who aren't already familiar, could you talk a little about Aloha Harvest and what you guys do?Leslie Pyo:Yeah, Aloha Harvest is a food rescue and redistribution nonprofit. We are the largest organization of our kind in Hawaii. We basically rescue excess food from places like grocery stores, wholesale distributors, restaurants. We rescue from about 250 per year, and then we redistribute that food free of charge to places like nonprofits and social service agencies that are feeding our communities. We work with about 175 of those organization.Austin Hattox:I saw on your website that you guys have reduced over 24 million pounds of food since starting in 1999. Are those numbers still accurate? Leslie Pyo:Yep, accurate and going up every month during COVID. First month of COVID, we saw a 50% increase in how much we rescued and redistributed compared to the previous year. The next month 78% increase and last month 66% increase, so 24 million and sharply increasing now.Austin Hattox:That is an astronomical amount of food to deal with in a normal year, and then now I guess it's becoming even crazier. Where does the food come from and where does it go?Leslie Pyo:Yeah, so it comes from a big network. We have the most number of connections of I think any organization in our state. So that network of 250 donors includes like, Foodland is a very prevalent grocery store that's everywhere in Hawaii. We rescue from almost all of the Foodlands on Oahu where we're based. We rescue from restaurants and a lot of the wholesale distributors, in addition to companies that throw catered events and even individuals. We'll have people who have a mango tree and too many mangoes, and they'll ask if they can give it to us because it's still excess food. Leslie Pyo:Just to emphasize, I feel like when people hear rescue food, they might think of food that it's about to go bad or it's not something you want to eat, but we would never rescue food we ourselves wouldn't eat. It's more often, it's food that just didn't get sold or didn't get eaten and it's perfectly good. It's cool because we actually are able to save money for the food donors that we rescue from, because it actually costs money to dispose the food, and instead we pick it up free and then deliver it free. So you asked where it goes. Leslie Pyo:So a lot of the nonprofits and social service agencies that we deliver to, their sole mission is not just feeding people. A lot of them are actually rehabilitation programs in some sense, whether it's education, or housing or mental health. And by providing free food, they're able to reallocate more of their budget to those other holistic set of services that they offer. Some of them do feedings like church pantries and stuff, but a lot of them it's cool because they actually work more holistically with the population that they serve.Austin Hattox:Are the locations where you deliver food, are they primarily on Oahu or the greater Hawaii? Leslie Pyo:Yeah. So as of right now, we do only work on Oahu, but we have a goal to expand to all of the neighbor islands within the next several years.Austin Hattox:Excellent. What does that look like logistically for you guys, when you're moving around such massive amounts of food?Jay Purvis:So how it looks for picking up food, is there are multiple routes that are given to different drivers. And these routes are made by our amazing operations manager, Mele, and she takes a lot of qualitative and quantitative information to determine where the food is and where it needs to go. This information comes from understanding the size and the needs of certain recipient agencies. It also comes from knowing what food producers we have on deck, who have extra food or are providing us food as a donation. Jay Purvis:And then we assign these routes to the drivers and the drivers will go out to pick up food. And they actually have an app that's called Capture OnTheGo, where they will document the pounds of food that they pick up. They follow their assigned route to drop off that food at a recipient agency, which as Leslie said, can be anything from a homeless shelter that feeds folks that are actively living outside, to rehabilitation homes, things like that. And they will track how much food they drop off at each location live in the field. Jay Purvis:At that point, that data actually comes into a relational database that we have hosted on site at our office, and we can actually see live the numbers coming in from which area, and which route to which recipient agency, which we then can look at trends over time based on like how much we're getting from Foodland, as Leslie mentioned, to what types of agencies the food ends up getting to. And that's something we want to develop more and understand better, so we can make sure that redistribution happens in a way that affects the people that need it the most. Austin Hattox:Interesting. Okay. And so is Capture OnTheGo specifically for this sort of food delivery model, or is it like just moving large amounts of items around?Jay Purvis:I don't know if it's made specifically just for food rescue. I'm not sure if it has other capabilities.Austin Hattox:Okay. But it allows you guys to kind of stay on top of your information, and get a better sense of like where everything's going and maybe get trends over time, and figure out where you need to focus or where would be a good place to allocate food moving forward? Jay Purvis:Yeah, absolutely. It lets us know the weight of where we're getting things and where they end up. Leslie Pyo:Yeah, it's not physically built for food rescue. And since I know that this is a podcast where you're speaking to other nonprofit leaders and people wanting to understand the inner workings, it's worth mentioning that we're actually looking at Salesforce as a replacement for Capture OnTheGo, and we happen to be doing it in the midst of COVID-19 which makes things fun. Yeah.Austin Hattox:Interesting. So why are you guys evaluating Salesforce? Leslie Pyo:Basically just looking to ... And Jay can tag on to this as well, but looking for a more robust system to capture better data so that we can better do what Jay was saying we already do, which is like make sure the food actually gets to where it's most needed. But we know that we can do that even better and Salesforce is obviously just known. And fun fact, which I didn't know until I started here, but nonprofits actually get, is it five lessons Jay, for free? Of course, you have to pay for any specialization or customization, but the base level of Salesforce nonprofits can get for free. Leslie Pyo:Yeah, basically just looking to capture better data in a better way, and not just for the actual food rescue part of our process. But obviously there's a lot of other information that gets tracked and goes into it, from involving volunteers, to just admin to financial donors. So we're wanting a solution like Salesforce that can offer one repository for all of that data.Austin Hattox:Is there any specific data that you guys are trying to better capture that you think Salesforce is more attuned for?Jay Purvis:One of the things that we want to do is build our ability to redistribute the food, like I said to the folks who need it most. Currently, the way we do that a lot of times is that the drivers can make last second decisions based on their institutional knowledge of where they're at, and who often will need things. One of the things we've been talking about developing is the ability for drivers to select some criteria of the food that they currently have, and then have a populated list of agencies that could accept that food based on their ability to refrigerate their number of folks or things like that, that will help us get the food out more to folks who need it, and have a more centralized decision making process in that way.Austin Hattox:Okay. So this would be a greater CRM focus, and you guys could really dig down and get into the specifics of your different locations where the food can go to, and what their capabilities are in terms of what food they need and how they could handle it better.Jay Purvis:Definitely, and the demographics of the recipient agencies that they're going to so we can say, "Oh, we've been fed approximately this many folks who are homeless, or over a certain age." Because right now, we don't really have that information, not on a live drop by drop basis. So being able to tease that out, would really help us understand who we're serving in a better way.Austin Hattox:Are you guys using any CRM at all right now, or is it primarily the Capture OnTheGo app?Leslie Pyo:Primarily Capture OnTheGo.Austin Hattox:Okay. Shifting gears a little bit. So you're moving a lot of stuff around. Obviously, you have different drivers and different routes in a lot of locations. How do volunteers work into this bigger picture of Aloha harvest.Leslie Pyo:Yeah, so prior to COVID-19, one of our biggest ... Well really just for some context, our volunteer program really got started in a serious way last fall. When I came on board prior to that there just wasn't really the capacity for a bit to have much of a volunteer program. One of the biggest programs we had before COVID was we have tons of farmers markets all across the island. Volunteers, there be lead volunteers and the people who helped them building relationships with those local farmers and saying, "Hey, if you're not able to sell all your produce, and this market is on a Sunday, and there won't be another market, you can sell it until Wednesday. If you're just going to feed this to livestock or you basically not going to use it. Can

The Outdoor CircleAustin Hattox:Today we're going to be speaking with Myles Ritchie, programs director of The Outdoor Circle. Myles, welcome to the show.Myles Ritchie:Thanks for having me.Austin Hattox:For those in our audience who aren't already familiar, could you talk a little about The Outdoor Circle and what it is you guys do?Myles Ritchie:Sure. So The Outdoor Circle is Hawaii's oldest environmental non-profit. We began in 1912, so we've had 108 years working statewide, to kind of fulfill two main goals that we had since the beginning. The first is interestingly enough, the two work together, is anti billboards. So Hawaii used to have billboards and if anybody's been here and they look at iconic Diamond Head, which you can see from Waikiki, the extinct volcano. There used to be billboards up there and all throughout the state. So what happened was back in 1912, a group of really passionate women came together and decided, this is visual blight and we want to try and change that.Myles Ritchie:So they started boycotting businesses to take down their signs, their billboards and said, "There's better ways to go about doing this." They began working on state laws to actually remove billboards and the claim to fame for the beginning of the organization. How it goes is that there was one business remaining that refused to take their billboards down. So they ended up pooling their money together, buying the business and shutting it down and that was the last instance of billboards statewide. So that whole process did take decades to fully be seen, but that's kind of how it began and going with trying to protect view plains and the beauty of the islands, is trees. So The Outdoor Circle has been responsible for planting hundreds of thousands of trees in the last 100 years statewide.Myles Ritchie:It's important to note that we are a state only organization. So we aren't outside of Hawaii. We like that because it keeps us grounded in our roots and in touch with the local communities. And through that time, we've never veered from just keeping everything as our slogan goes, clean green and beautiful. So that's keeping everything looking great without billboards, planting lots of trees, preserving the trees that are still here and just keeping Hawaii a nice green, vibrant place to live.Austin Hattox:And as someone who didn't consider themselves a beach person, prior to visiting Hawaii, I'm a big supporter of your mission. I was talking to my wife yesterday and I told her that you guys had done the anti billboard thing and she was like, "Oh, whoa, no way." Like she had read about that before we visited Hawaii.Myles Ritchie:We'll see, that's the thing, right? Most people, one, they don't until you mention there's no billboards, "Oh, there's no billboards." I didn't realize that until I started interning here years ago and then obviously I picked it up and I was like, "Wow, you know you're actually right." So that's kind of a thing that we are known for, but it's kind of with the older generation, the younger generations, it's just always been that way. So they don't really know the history behind it, but yeah, when you tell people about it, they're like, "Wow, that's actually right. That's pretty impressive."Austin Hattox:Yeah. And I think I went through the same thing where I didn't even realize it when I was in Hawaii, but then when my wife said it after our vacation, I was like, "You know what, you're right. There is no billboards." And it was kind of a nice background thing of not something I picked up on, but I think it provided a more natural, nicer, less corporate experience.Myles Ritchie:Well, that's what you want, right? Granted, there's still the corporate influence here, right? With the tourism and all the big hotels and stuff in Waikiki. But if we do try and make sure there's plenty of trees down there, try and give it a more realistic feel. But once you get outside of Waikiki and the other tourist areas and you go hiking in the mountains and things like that, or even to some communities that just have really great street tree avenues, it's pretty impressive. And it's the uphill battle, there's always that dynamic and tension between development, which does have to occur in an adequate and correct manner, but trees are always in conflict with it, right? You want to put up a new building, but there's a row of trees there. There's going to be battling between that.Myles Ritchie:So we try and, I guess, speak for the trees and preserve what we can as much as often as we can and then replant to offset and increase. Because that's the one thing too, we don't just want a city of young trees. You want to sell the mature canopy, because it's been proven in plenty of scientific documents and literature that mature trees, one, they take forever to get there. They can take decades or centuries to get to the size of the currently at. But the benefits that they produce are far superior. You can have a hundred smaller trees with their benefits equal one larger tree. So it's not just, "Okay, we have to take down this mature tree and we'll replant it with one." We always try and push for a far greater quantity to try and help with that offset.Austin Hattox:Let's explore that a little bit. What are some of the major programs you guys put on in order to accomplish your mission?Myles Ritchie:Right. So we've a wide range of programs, as you can imagine. In over a 100 year period, we've done everything and still continue to do environmental education programs for students from elementary through to university. In addition to working with the community, who's interested, lots of presentations. But we do tree plantings and tree giveaways and everything from trying to highlight our exceptional trees. Which we can get into in a second, because that's a whole section in itself, most likely. But we just work with the community with other non-profits, with government agencies, to try and pool our resources, knowledge, and expertise, and just get trees in the ground and preserve those that are still there. But in terms of The Outdoor Circle itself, it's really important to note that we have a really small staff, there's only three of us and collectively it at amounts to about two full-time people.Myles Ritchie:So we rely heavily on our members statewide and they're passionate and really devoted to the cause and they have a lot of expertise. A lot of them are master gardeners or they've been landscape architects, or they're just tree lovers who have been around different native plants for decades. So we rely on them to do a lot of these programs in addition to our partners with other entities. So I guess a few things going beyond that, before jumping back to maybe the Exceptional Tree Program or Google Trekker or whatnot, is a couple of programs we have lined up. They're still in the early stages and we're confident that they'll be coming to fruition, but essentially the first one is a potential fruit course over on the Big Island.Myles Ritchie:So a big issue and we're starting to see this now, especially with COVID-19, is there's a realistic threat of food insecurity. And whether that's just not producing enough locally for times of natural disasters or we rely on all food to come in on tankers, just huge BARD hardships. If those stop for whatever reason, we're in trouble here. So just being able to increase food security through the acts like fruit forest and just planting more local or having more local farms. To have fresher produce that are healthier generally, because they don't have as long as travel from point A to point B, and it supports the local economy. So this fruit forest, ideally, it's going to be in the Hilo area of the Big Island. And we're looking at planting over time, about 10 acres of land, various fruit trees, nut trees, native plants, kukui nuts is a really important one here.Myles Ritchie:So we're looking at doing that and then maybe once a month having the public come and just have maybe like a fruit picking day. And that way we can help promote food security, but at the same time, it also acts as a good seed source. So when we do these tree giveaways, which we give the plants away for free, a lot more of those varieties can actually produce food. So maybe 'ulu, so breadfruit is a popular one, citrus has always been good. There's just a whole wide variety, mangoes, everything like that. So that's one project we're looking at doing, hopefully kicking it off later this year or sometime in 2021.Myles Ritchie:And another one we're looking at doing is a women's correctional facility, which is on the windward side of Oahu, we're building off our program that we currently have there, our Lani-Kailua branch, where they have something called a Learning to Grow Program. And what they do is, they teach the inmates essentially how to grow [hydroponic plus 00:08:47] and then they do that. And then it gets sold to the local grocery stores to support the program and keep it funded. And how we're building off that, is we're essentially putting in a nursery now and we're going to teach these women inmates how to propagate plants. And then those trees will then be useful for, once again, the tree giveaways and planting events. So it's this whole process, but at the same time, when they served their time and they're getting released, they have an additional skill set that they can use to go out into the job market and get in the landscape field, should they choose to do so. So it's kind of an interesting thing. So you can see that we have these wide, diverse programs, but at the end of the day, it still comes back to the roots of just keeping Hawaii clean, green and beautiful.Austin Hattox:I bet that focus on the community helps propagate you guys' mission even further, by powering people, educating people and getting them more involved in the process. So that they too can give back to the natural diversity of Hawaii.Myles Ritchie:

Links:Read to Me InternationalAustin Hattox: Today, we're going to be speaking with Kara Kusunoki, executive director of Read To Me. Kara, welcome to the show.Kara Kusunoki: Thanks so much, Austin, for having me.Austin Hattox: For those in our audience who aren't already familiar, could you talk a little about Read To Me and what it is you guys do?Kara Kusunoki: Sure. So Read To Me International is a nonprofit founded in 1996 in the State of Hawaii. And our mission is pretty simple, it's to promote the love and joy of reading aloud, specifically to young children. And we believe that there is a huge significance in being able to read to children from a young age, as far as the vocabulary, their academic development, and the social-emotional development with bonding with their families and teachers at such an early age. So our activities, our programs, our events are all around coaching adults to support their children in their literacy efforts and growth.Austin Hattox: That's really cool. One thing that attracted me to you guys was the simplicity of your message, but also the impact. It's not something that I would normally think of having that big of an impact, but looking back on my life, I was read to a lot as a child. And I found I read every day now and I feel like that was a big push and why it eventually became a habit for me.Kara Kusunoki: Absolutely, Austin. And I think I share very similar thoughts to that as a child. I was a fairly unengaged child in school, and I think that my parents and my teachers didn't know what to do with me, they didn't know how to engage me further in school. One day, they just let me read off in the side of the corner, it was actually called The Chronicles of Narnia: The Witch, the Wardrobe, and the Lion, I believe.Kara Kusunoki: And so they allowed me to read that. And from there, the love of reading started and I actually started doing better in school whenever it came to reading, which is practically everything that we do in our lives. So that really set a strong foundation for that love of reading and engaged in school, as well as just the ability to connect with my parents and teachers more.Austin Hattox: So in terms of program structure, do you guys provide training to parents, or how do you achieve this goal? What does it look like logistically?Kara Kusunoki: Sure. Our primary target audience are parents or caregivers or even educators that work with young children. And so, because they are our primary audience, we are coaching parents, educators and caregivers to really equip them with the tools and strategies of how to support their children when reading aloud to them. So we have classes, we have multiple week programs, we have a national quality conference that's open to the public. And these are all to provide professional learning opportunities for people that are interested in learning how to better support children as they progress and read aloud.Austin Hattox: Excellent. That's really, really cool. Really interesting approach. And I'm sure that's really effective too, to do it like a community based type audience.Kara Kusunoki: Right. And we believe, Read To Me International believes that parents are oftentimes children's first teachers in life. And so we want to build the skills, the behaviors, habits, attitudes needed so that they can be their child's strongest advocate in life academically, socially, emotionally. And we know that those read aloud interactions capture a lot of those intangible things that you would consider as part of the read aloud process.Austin Hattox: To give our listeners a more personal sense of your impact, do you have any stories about individuals or families where you've made an especially large difference?Kara Kusunoki: It's so difficult to choose. We do have quite a few stories, Austin, to share. One alumni from our program. We also work in prisons and correctional facilities in the state of Hawaii. We work with incarcerated parents who are looking for ways to connect with their children, even though they are incarcerated themselves. So one of the programs that we have is that we work with incarcerated mothers to write, illustrate and publish their own children's story books, that are then sent home to their child along with an audio recording of them reading aloud to their children. And some mothers are able to read out to their children and send the message home that they still love them and they're thinking of them constantly.Kara Kusunoki: So one of our alumni through this program was an incarcerated mother who had not had contact with her daughter since being incarcerated. And her daughter understandably was fairly upset, did not know what was going on with her mother's incarceration. And the family did not really want them to be in contact for visitation in person. So alumni participant wrote a book called Mommy Loves You, and she did the illustrations for it. And it was basically a tribute to reminding her daughter that even though she was separated from her, that she still loved her. And she was able to mail that book home along with the audio recording to her daughter, her daughter received it.Kara Kusunoki: That was actually the start of rekindling that relationship between mother and child. And so when our participant was released from prison, she was able to reconnect with her daughter. And they are now, fast forward to two years, she is off of parole, she is living together with her daughter and she's the primary caregiver. And we are so proud of our alumni who are able to turn their lives around and make a new start and using reading as a catalyst to do that.Austin Hattox: That is a super cool story. That's so inspiring. Obviously, reading aloud to children is very important, but that seems to take you guys' idea and spin it to something so much larger where you're helping rebuild families in a way.Kara Kusunoki: Right. And we know that research findings show how valuable reading is to a child's academic development and growth, but we also need to consider how it develops children's socially and emotionally. The messages that we send through books, the discussions that we have about books, morals and themes. These are all important takeaways for our children to have when they have that precious time with their parents or a teacher who cares about them, or even a caregiver who is dedicated to seeing them through their youngest phases of life and helping them to develop.Austin Hattox: That makes a lot of sense. What age groups are typically included within this program or within this wider organization?Kara Kusunoki: Sure. Read To Me supports parents who have children from newborns through grade five, primarily. Though we know that a lot of the practices can still be promoted with children that are older than the fifth grade. We have alumni who still come to all of our annual conferences every year, who do our virtual read aloud with us because they know that their child is never too old to be read to out loud. And they use it as a tradition, or some of us like to call it a bedtime, nighttime tradition where they're reading aloud together, discussing the moral or the theme of the story together, and using that as a bonding mechanism.Austin Hattox: How do you guys get the word out about Read To Me?Kara Kusunoki: Well, Read To Me is about 24 years old, and so we're able to use a lot of our existing community partnerships to get the word out about our website, which is available to anyone in the world that has resources about distant learning, different books that are encouraged, different crafting things that you can do. So we work with community partners from our website, we work with them to also recruit for our programs and events. And we've been fortunate just because Hawaii is the Aloha State, and we feel like a lot of the work that we do collectively moves the ball forward for our children and our families in Hawaii.Austin Hattox: And so that you brought up your website, what role would you say your website serves in the overall idea of accomplishing your mission?Kara Kusunoki: Our goal for the Read To Me website is to serve as a repository and resource site for parents, educators, caregivers, social service providers, to be able to quickly refer to best practices and resources regarding reading and reading aloud. So you can find anything from age appropriate book lists to distance learning resources, especially during this time where COVID-19 has impacted quite a few of our communities, as well as videos that demonstrate reading aloud tips and strategies. We like to try to update our website as much as possible to make sure that it's a relevant and responsive website for all parents.Austin Hattox: That's something I should mention, is that you guys have a very nice web presence. And that was one thing that set you guys apart where I thought like, wow, their design is really well done and this is very age appropriate. It's a cute website, but very effective in its execution I think.Kara Kusunoki: Thanks, Austin.Austin Hattox: Yeah. My wife was looking over my shoulder the other day and was like, "Hey, what website is that?" Your website is good, but what's something that you think your website could do better.Kara Kusunoki: That's a tough one, because we receive so many different kinds of requests for different materials from users that visit our website. I think one thing that Read To Me is looking at is, how do we get more community members involved in doing read alouds out in the community, as well as digital storage of those read alouds. So that people can click a button, look at a celebrity reading aloud and learn why it's so important to read aloud to children, and even be able to model their read alouds after best practices that celebrities share. And so we're looking at that and we're working on it. We're slowly updating our website with the readers that we do have. And we are also just keeping an eye ou

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Note: The information discussed in this interview may be dated. For the most up-to-date information on The Goodtimes Project, please visit their website.Around 7:55, Becky mentioned their holiday cruise. She wanted to thank Argosy Cruises for offering these free holiday cruises to The Goodtimes Project for almost 30 years.

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TeenTix websiteTranscript:Austin: Today we're going to be speaking with Shelton Harris, marketing and partnerships manager at TeenTix. Shelton, welcome to the show. Shelton: Hey, thanks for having me, man. How are you doing? Austin: I'm doing pretty well. We're hanging on here. Shelton: Beautiful. Austin: For those in our audience who aren't already familiar, could you talk a little bit about TeenTix and your mission?Shelton: Yeah, a hundred percent. So yes, as Austin mentioned, my name is Shelton. I'm the marketing and partnerships manager at TeenTix, admittedly, fairly new. I only started the job at the top of January, so top of 2020, but TeenTix is a youth service organization that's in the art space that basically works to create equity and opportunity for young people in the arts community. Specifically teenagers, age 13 to 19. Shelton: TeenTix started in, it was founded in 2004 by someone that loved the arts. She was super into dance and theater and just was wondering why there wasn't much of a young presence at these events when she went to them.Shelton: And I think she realized several problems, like ticket prices are too high, or there weren't people in their lives already that were championing the arts and just like it, it wasn't being made an easy experience for a young person to say they wanted to go to the opera, they wanted to go to the theater, or see a musical, or something like that.Shelton: And so that I think was the problem that was set out to fix. And so how it started was the resident organizations on Seattle center campus. So like the, the Seattle opera Pacific Northwest ballet, the Pacific science center, a few little odds and ends, organizations like that. Shelton: Basically, we set it up, or I won't say we, cause I wasn't there at the time. They set it up so that anybody who set up a free account with TeenTix, and that's the beauty of the TeenTix passes. It's free for the teens to sign up. There's absolutely no strings attached. And whether they use it or don't use it, and what that pass grants them the access to is $5 tickets to any one of our partner organizations.Shelton: And at the humble beginning, it was only, like I said, a handful of organizations, resident organizations on Seattle center campus. But that's evolved now to about 75 different arts organizations, not just in Seattle, but in, you know, our surrounding cities. Tacoma, Bellevue, Edmonds, stuff like that as well.Shelton: And it's broken out into like, there's almost nothing that a young person can experience with their TeenTix pass. They can go to the science center, they can see a ballet and they can go to like, there's movies, movie theaters that accept the pass and you know, live music like symphony and opera and just various things like that.Shelton: There's this, like you'd have to check out the list. It's truly impressive how many different organizations there are, but that's kind of the flagship program that kind of inspired TeenTix and what it is. And so here we are, 16 years later, fortunate to still be carrying out this mission.Austin: That's awesome. I had obviously read a good portion of your website before this interview, but I didn't realize kind of the depth that you guys did. Shelton: When I came into this, cause my background is the music industry, management and marketing. And so when I came into this role, my big priority was, the first thing I noticed was that a lot of like the light, like the traditional live music venues, like you know like the clubs that you'd see, like a band or a rapper or a singer or something at work partners. And there's a lot of intricacies as to why it's just a really competitive business as a industry as opposed to a lot of the other arts industries.Shelton: But that's kind of my mission is to eventually get independent club owners and concert promoters to understand that, you know, music is art as well. And it's just as important for a young person to be able to access those as the theater or the opera. And so that's kind of one of my personal goals for working in the organization is to get music being a larger branch of it.Austin: Yeah. That sounds like you'd be able to leverage a lot of your prior connections and really grow the types of venues that teens could partake in. Shelton: Yeah, absolutely. And it's only gotten bigger and bigger, especially in the last few years, like as I think our presence has shifted greatly since we went through, and this is speaking a little bit to your tech side of things.Shelton: We went through a website upgrade last year that kind of revolutionized TeenTix's model at least as opposed to the original software. So originally up until early last year, you had to have that physical pass that we sent out in the mail. Like you'd sign up for it, we'd get your information right, we'd send you a physical pass, and you would absolutely, you'd have to have that pass to go to the event.Shelton: But now that we've, we've got a new website that now issues a digital pass. The moment you create an account. Right. And that pass can now be used from the smartphone. You know, whatever. It could be printed out and stuck in your wallet. There's just, we've increased the accessibility. We still send out that physical pass, but now a teen could literally go to our website.Shelton: Right now, I will let you know despite everything going on, obviously, but they can go to our website right now, sign up for a pass. It would literally be active right away. They could then leave the house with the pass immediately and go see an art event for five bucks. That's super convenient. Shelton: I kind of resonate with what you said earlier. I didn't know about it seems it has been around this long. I'm only 27 so I could have taken advantage of it at one point, but I didn't know about it until this year, and I think that they've had, I think we're a team six is that is they've had a tremendous, tremendous amount of success in kind of the industries that like the original that the founders were originally in, you know, like in more contemporary, traditional art styles. And I think that as time is progressing, that's kind of, I'm trying to hold on to, you know, what was originally the mission and the heart and soul, but also make it a little bit more relevant and a little bit more contemporary for, you know, younger generation or kids that are coming up now. Just making sure that we're able to adapt and still attract newer, younger teams the same way we have been. Austin: It's interesting you say that because when I saw TeenTix and the mission, I immediately thought I would have loved to have gone to all these live music shows, but I feel like I wasn't as exposed to some of these other types of art that your outlining, like I didn't have any expsorue to the ballet growing up or opera, or musicals. Is there a few types of art that teens typically go to more that there's more interest for the ones that are super popular? Shelton: Some of the bigger theaters you like the, you know, like the larger theaters that have like full year long scheduled events. What's it called? That the Seattle symphony is pretty popular, that the movie theaters are quite popular. So we were partnered with various different film organizations. But a couple of the larger ones are SIF, which is the Seattle international film festival. And then nifty, which is the national film festival for talented youth.Shelton: And just a couple of different organizations like that, that not only produce events, but also just exist as a movie theater where you can go and watch films. And so that's one of the perks is, you know, we'll say we're pitching the past to a young person and they say, well, I don't go to the ballet. And it's like, cool.Shelton: Well, do you watch, do you like to watch movies? And it's like, Oh yeah, I like to watch movies. It's like, cool, well, you know, you could go watch any movie that's playing at the AMC right now at one of these theaters. And when they realized that, that's kind of like the in, you know what I mean? Like that's kind of the low barrier for entry.Shelton: That is just easy to get someone hooked. And then we just, you know, we love to remind them that by the way, look at these other 75 organizations that you can also participate in. You make a great point that like, I mean, when I was younger, nobody was necessarily saying, Hey, you know, Shelton, do you want to go to the ballet?Shelton: Or Hey, do you want to go see an opera or anything like that. And so the opportunity just wasn't really there. But I think that's the idea behind the pass is that if the, you know, the risk is lower, it's only $5, it's easy. They can, that any other young person can sign up for a pass as well and go with them.Shelton: We encourage the art or our partner organizations to host teen nights, which is where we'll kind of partner with them to curate. Kind of a, just make the experience a little bit more special and a little bit more interesting for a young person. And normally what that looks like is like. There'll be like a pre show talk where like the director or some cast members will give kind of their perspective on the show. Talk about what it was like planning for it and just give them some backstory on them as artists in the show itself before they perform. Or they'll do like a Q and A afterwards or they'll set up like the health, like free pizza for the teens or like a photo booth, stuff like that. Like we just, we want them to be more comfortable going to a lot of these places.Shelton: Cause like the opera house is not going to be a traditional young space. And so we. We try to change that, or we try to basically coach these organizations on how they can be more friendly to young people because they also want to attack that demographic. So that's kind of the other role we play at for our partner organizations, is not just giving young people that access to the art itself

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