We developed a composting program that engages and educates the community in food systems thinking and community sustainability. It also provides solutions that empower individuals/businesses to capture organic waste and retain it as a community resource. (1) We built bokashi composting bins to distribute to local families. (2) We conducted bokashi workshops to teach ʻohana and/or businesses how to make bokashi, empowering them to make their own. (3) We expanded outward with the start of our non-profit Hānai Kaiāulu.

My project was to take food waste from local grocery stores that aren't being sold because of cosmetic issues, but are still perfectly edible and give it to low income families and those that lost their jobs due to COVID-19. I also got produce that local farms couldn't sell at the Farmer's market and included it in my produce boxes. Because produce has such a short shelf life an absurd amount of it goes in the dump, my project redistributed it to low income families with no cost with the help of this grant. Thus, the final product was 130 boxes of produce that went out to families.

Save Seeds, Save Our Future was a four part workshop series, that taught youth K-12, in addition to teachers and mentors across the state of Hawaii, the art, practice and skill of saving seeds. We sent out seeds for participants to plant before the first workshop and the series paralleled the journey of the sprouting, growing, blossoming, and saving of the seed in their own successional journeys. We invited guest speakers for each of the two hour workshops and seed-saving materials were provided throughout its duration. Save Seeds, Save Our Future fostered the platform for an intergenerational seed-saving and seed-sharing cohort of individuals inspired to create positive lasting change in our communities.

The Kihei Charter School (KCS) Eco Club developed the KCS Zero Waste Initiative to reduce our schools' waste by establishing a culture of ‘reuse, reduce, and recycle’ on campus. We proposed to develop and maintain three new programs by the end of the school year that would be set up to continue on indefinitely into the future. The three programs are: Sustainable Cutlery Program: Replace plastic cutlery with more sustainable options such as metal or bamboo. Composting Program: Collect our school food waste and other compostables from lunch and use them to create humus for our school garden. Recycling Program: Collect our school’s recyclable materials from classrooms and meals and bring them to the recycling plant on Maui

The core purpose of the Kailua Community Fridge Project is to construct and maintain a mobile solar-powered community fridge and dry food pantry in and around the Kailua Town area. This structure will be weatherproof, aesthetically pleasing, and suitable for temporary or semi-permanent installation in any given location. Secondary goals of the project include catalyzing conversations about community and food insecurity, building and strengthening intra-community connections, and creating a body of technical and logistical information to help facilitate the creation of more community fridges across the island and the state. Throughout the project period, the fridge was prototyped and research was done on permitting, etc. to prepare to deploy a final product in the Fall.

To inform the community of Bill 40, a state law passed by Mayor Kirk Caldwell banning the distribution of styrofoam containers and plastic utensils, and how it is beneficial to the community and the environment, we aimed to educate and encourage the community in a very fun and attractive way by creating a website, instagram account, and flyers featuring fun illustrations and using simple language so that it would appeal to more people and make the information more easily understandable.

Community Partner - City and County of Honolulu Office of Climate Change, Sustainability and Resiliency

My project is creating sustainable beauty. I gathered scrap pieces of wood and turned them into 30 beautiful pieces including cutting boards, picture frames, and clocks.

My project was centered around addressing the invasive fish species population (specifically the Roi fish) in the state of Hawaii. I created a standard operating procedure for Roi fish collection days to target and eliminate this invasive species.

Our goal was to provide affordable local produce to the Kailua/Kalaheo community during COVID-19 by creating a campus farmer's market consisting of produce grown in our school garden & at Kualoa Ranch.

Watershed monitoring is important to track human impacts on the local environment. Our project used tools to monitor the water quality and biological integrity of the Kalihi Stream and Niuhelewai stream in our ahupuaʻa. Water quality monitoring probes were deployed within the watershed and analyzed by students.

Our project created a plant pot out of a paper-like material made of old shredded paper. This will be used in conjunction with a rice paste glue to make it more structurally sound. The old paper we shred will be recycled from the school trash. We chose to use a rice paste because it is natural and nontoxic.

Community Partner - Maui Nui Botanical Gardens

Our initial project goal was to develop a way to process and safely consume invasive algae. Over the course of our project we centered in on non-consumption uses of this algae, such as fish pellets. We designed and prototyped a way to process the algae.

Community Partner - Mālama Maunalua

This project aims to contribute to restoring delicate native forests and grasslands in Hawaii. The project was observation-based, where the growth of the plant was observed and recorded weekly. Starting from seeds, the 2 different native plant species were put into 2" flowering pots, 25 per each species. Then, once the plant grew, the plants were moved to a 4" pot for further root development. After further growth is observed, a netted area will be set up at the Kaiser High School garden in order to place the plants in the ground. Although the plants may not fully bloom due to the weather or season, the records I will have compiled by May will be sent as a final report to the community partner so that my efforts may be replicated elsewhere.

Community Partner - Oʻahu Army Natural Resources Program

Intelliponics is an intelligent and sustainable autonomous aquaponics system for educational use. The first goal of Intelliponics is automation in order to reduce the amount of maintenance required and lower the possibility of catastrophic events that could lead to the death of plants and livestock. The second goal and long term vision for Intelliponics is to develop the system into a product that could be sold to schools to teach the students of tomorrow to integrate modern technology with agriculture in order to sustainably grow food for the generations to come. Interested schools would order a set of desktop system kits that would be assembled by students in class. These students would learn about the principles of STEM as well as an introduction to agriculture and aquaculture. The schools would also be able to purchase larger systems for outdoors so that they could grow produce and livestock potentially for school lunches.

Mālama ‘Āina at the Priory comprises two projects, Māla ʻAi Pono and Aloha ʻĀina, working together to make St. Andrew’s Schools - The Priory a more environmentally sustainable school and to inspire others to make the switch to being more environmentally friendly to keep our island home beautiful. Māla ʻAi Pono is a gardening project which teaches younger students about plastic consumption and how to make self-watering planters from recycled plastic bottles. In these planters, students grow produce for their school gardens or their homes. This project aims to encourage students to grow their own produce and promote a love for gardening. Aloha ʻĀina is a reusable utensil project which will prepares our school community for Ordinance 19-30 and reduces the school’s number of disposable utensils used. For this initiative, the Kōkua Hawaiʻi Foundation has donated 150 bamboo sporks.

Our project aims to increase the energy productivity of existing solar panels. Upon examination of the reflective properties, some flowers obtain, and the knowledge of concentrated solar panel systems, we've brainstormed the idea to perform biomimicry of those reflective flowers and integrate them into an improved concentrated solar panel system. Our project aimed towards curating a more efficient solar panel that is more sustainable, affordable, and more effective.

My project focuses on tackling, reviving, and saving the existing native forests that are left in Pālehua that are being taken over by invasive plants and invasive animals such as cattle, pigs and goats. By removing invasive plants and replant natives, we are helping further restore our water supply, native resources, ecosystem health, and providing our community a resource to learn and experience the up-land area of our community.

The main goal of our project was to determine the amount of nutrients in the Korean Natural Farming products we produce and determine the amount of live microbiota in culture samples. We hope to use this information to help us grow our crops, trees, etc. on this farm more efficiently and effectively, as well as learning new ways to fertilize our crops using materials that we already have access to.