My name is Hoku-Lani, and I’m a junior at Konawaena High School. I chose my goal for the Aloha+ challenge to be increasing local food not only because local food is healthier, but also because it doesn’t leave/use a large carbon footprint, and it brings communities together. I was raised in Japan before I moved to Hawaii for highschool and there, communities were built by helping each other and working together, it especially made the environment cleaner and healthier because these aspects are important in Japanese culture. They did school activities to help keep Japan healthy and clean such as class cleanups around the community while school was on winter break, school gardens that are added to lunch, etc. However, when I moved back to the United States, I saw things that I read about on the news about how bad the energy was getting, such as water pollution, toxic waste etc. After joining my schools Environmental Activist club, I became more invested in helping to find ways to better the environment around us, so I had an idea to plant a school garden, but since we are on quarantine I decided to make a mini vegetable garden at my house.