Hope For Kids ʻEkahi

Overview

In June 2009 the Foundation began the Hope for Kids work with nine partner organizations. Three years into the initiative, a tenth partner was added. Over the course of the six years, the Partners all explored how to expand or improve their work with children in their communities.

While each Partner delivered their programs in their own ways reflective of their community and their setting, they all agreed to incorporate the following elements into their programs and to explore how these program elements contributed to bringing the children they served a sense of hope:

ALOHA

provide opportunities for meaningful engagement with an adult who shares of their ʻike and aloha;
KULEANA

believe in the potential of children and set high expectations for their performance;
MĀLAMA ʻĀINA

provide opportunities to learn outdoors;
HO‘OLAKO

assist in the development of life skills;
MĒHEUHEU

provide opportunities to celebrate and find strength in one’s cultural identity and/or use culture for learning.

Resources

A Voyage of Hope

While the formal funding relationship with these ten partners has ended, the Foundation continues to value the work of the ʻEkahi Partners and credits these organizations with laying the foundation for the next phase of its work – Hope for Kids ʻElua. Read about Hope for Kids ʻEkahi and the Foundation's Theory of Change developed by the ʻEkahi Partners.

In an effort to capture the key lessons the Foundation learned about working with the Hope for Kids ʻEkahi Partners, the Foundation wrote a Reflections document. This document captures five key insights about engaging with and supporting Partners in connecting with each other.

Evaluation, toward the goals of learning and improving and to be better able to communicate the results of this work, was a commitment from the ‘Ekahi Partners and the Foundation. A participatory evaluation approach was taken over the course of the initiative with work carried out by all of the Partners, the Foundation and led by PREL. A result of the evaluation work was the production of two annual evaluation reports (2014 and 2015) summarizing evaluation findings for the Partners.

Early Outcomes
- Knowledge of and appreciation for community
- Positive feelings about self
- Sense of achievement (hiki) and increased self-confidence
- Developing skills
- Sense of belonging in a cultural continuum
- Connection to the ʻāina
Intermediate Outcomes
- Belonging to community
- Building trust and developing resiliency
- Recognizing potential for making changes
- Increasing mastery of skills
- Making choices informed by cultural practices
- Stewardship of ʻāina
Long-Term Outcomes
Hope: A vision of a positive future of action that includes the following behaviors and beliefs:
- Kuleana to community
- Living aloha
- Making changes
- Applying skills
- Cultural vibrancy
- Kinship with ʻāina