A group of 9 Kanu volunteers including Lala Bach-Buzzell, Claudette Springer, Erin Shaw, Maile Neff, Kaimana Pine, Melissa Matsubara, Olin and me went down to the Rise Up Music Fest at the Shell last Friday night to promote the school furlough petition and rally. We signed up almost 400 people in...

I've been holding on to doband #003 for a while now (check www.dobandshawaii.org if you haven't heard of "dobands"), and finally did a deed I think worthy of posting. I've noticed an increase in the number of homeless people in my neighborhood - Chinatown - in the past 2 months. Last week, I...

Olin and I met with parents from the group Hawaii Education Matters earlier this week and things have moved fast since then. A group of us will be recruiting for the HEM rally at the Rise Up Music Fest tonight at the Waikiki Shell. We put up a post about the furlough issue in the blog, and...

The members of Kanu Hawaii are working for a future built on island lessons of sustainability, aloha, and self reliance. The recent agreement between the DOE, BOE, teachers union and the Governor to close public schools on 17 Fridays puts that future in serious jeopardy. The decision is the...

I'm sad and angry about the loss of 17 days of instruction for our kids, and worried about what the long term effect will be on these students. I also feel like this is merely the latest example of an educational system that seems to put the interests of adults ahead of the needs of kids. I'm...

The Eat Local Challenge was inspired by members. Jennifer Hong was the first to pledge to eat “localtarian” - a term she coined, which I prefer to the more widely used “locavore”. Soon after, dozens of local-food-related commitments sprang up online. Kyle Datta suggested the...

A few weeks ago, I spoke to a group of 8th graders from public schools across the islands - part of the PUEO program at Punahou. As a gift, they gave me a self-watering lettuce plant in a cool container made from a recycled plastic bottle. I told them about my sprout incident, and they assured me...

When the founders of Kanu Hawaii first got together a few years ago, one of the things that worried us most was the slow deterioration of aloha in the islands. We wanted our kids and grandkids to grow up in a place where a spirit of compassion was tangible, and where that spirit could continue to...

People said we were crazy to try to rally folks on a Monday morning during the work week.  But yesterday, about 80 of us turned out to work shifts throughout the morning - going door-to-door at the Capitol trading CFLs for incandescent bulbs and checking tire pressure for every car in the...

With less than two weeks of food on supermarket shelves at any given time, Hawaii's food supply is at serious risk. Growing more of our own food is the key to fresher, more sustainable, and more secure food. But, farmers and food experts see a big challenge ahead: a reliable water system for...