In preparation for the upcoming 10th Annual Native Hawaiian Convention, my friends and I have been volunteering and building na kahili for speakers and other VIPs at the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement (CNHA) offices. Kahili are beautiful, made up of rows of feathers and perhaps integrate some pattern.

They are fragile, though, so to help recipients get them home safely, organizers are building covers for travel. To do this, they needed 50 paper towel rolls covered in fabric that slip over the dowel rod and push the feathers up in protection. Members helped greatly, but there was still a shortfall of 10-15 covers.

I took to Twittering and asked my followers if they had extra rolls--a move known as crowdsourcing. @Midori_Dori tweeted back that she had several cardboard rolls from fabric bolts that we might be able to use.

We went to their studio to pick them up and discovered Midori Dori creates reusable fabric gift wraps in all sorts of sizes and colors: A great idea to help "Simplify the Holidays"!! (I included a video for them!)

Midori-dori owner, Stacy, was excited to help us because she wasn't sure how to best use the empty cardboard rolls. As someone who's product promotes Reducing, Reusing and Recycling, she was glad to hear the rolls could be put to good use in the community and offered to send more if needed.

The Kahili fit perfectly in the tubes and CNHA said they could use more rolls as they teach Kahili building classes in the community.

This experience was just reminded me of so much of why I love Kanu ... from volunteering with CNHA, learning more about the history of the Kahili, using technology to meet other like-minded folks, finding a great idea for the Simplify the Holidays campaign, upcycling something that might have been thrown out otherwise and using that to build community in the future!!