PROJECT HAWAII INC
PO Box 1844, Keaau, HI 96749 www.helpthehomelesskeiki.org

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Organizations Filed Purposes: Project Hawai'i, Inc., mission is to enhance the lives of homeless children and help them escape their cycle of poverty. Providing year round services to homeless and poverty stricken children on the islands of Hawai'i, Maui and O'ahu. Solely staffed by volunteers and supported by public donations, community partnerships, company donations and foundation grants. Providing year round interactive solutions to help these children gain self-esteem, life and social skills to escape their cycle of poverty.

Our mission is the enhance the lives of homeless and poverty stricken children, helping them to escape their cycle of poverty. We provide services year round on the islands of Hawai'i and O'ahu. Our agency is run 100% by volunteers and solely supported by public donations. We provide emergency and life necessities to homeless unsheltered children and during the holidays conduct even more outreach to encampments to assure that no child is left out of the wonders of the holiday season. We will provide services to over 1,500 individual homeless children annually. During the holidays we can have as many as 100 volunteers involved. Our major life changing program is our summer educational programs. We provide a jr. leader program, a teen mentoring program and a summer educational camp. During this time we will have the community provide educational workshops, athletics, music, culture, etc to provide a well rounded learning process. We send over 300 homeless children back to

Even with COVID we still offered our full summer camp programs with modifications to accommodate the ever changing rules and regulations. Our major accomplishment is our SUMMER EDUCATIONAL PROGRAM: For our 15th year this year we proud to announce that our jr. leader pilot program is now a full-time summer program and will continue to allow for growth to include more educational options, such as the stem program, etc. What a learning experience for everyone. Maybe a once in a lifetime? We also have an amazing "teen week" (which is actually 10 days) that was designed to allow teens who had graduated through our program when they were younger and now on their way to a brighter future. To come back and mentor the younger children, to share their experiences and why this program is so important. The entire week was full of cultural learning, workshops, leadership classes, and bonding exercises. All before they were paired with younger children to mentor during the Edu-Camp sleepover camp on the Big Island. Sleepover Camp on big island allowing the children from ages 3-7 to escape their everyday hardship of living homeless and learning life and social skills to help them succeed. This camp allows for the public community to be more involved with sharing their talents and teaching new skills to the homeless children. We introduce a wide-variety of activities and venues from art, culture, yoga, reading, theater, music and more. We also provide eye and oral exams. Our main goal is to help them gain the self-esteem as well as life and social skills to help them succeed in school. Adventures Abound Day camp is our session on O'ahu and allows the children to explore the wonders of their island. They will go on field trips, adventures and learn the basic life and social skills to succeed in school. This is our 12th year and we strive to advance with each year. The volunteers pick the homeless children up every morning at 7a.m. get them fed and ready for the day. Pair them with their teen mentor and get ready for the field trips across the island. Exploration through the zoo, aquarium, discovery zone, and other educational programs. The overall goal is to provide them with newfound skills to succeed in school. At the end of both camps children and their siblings all receive their new backpacks filled with supplies and new outfits to start their first day of school. Our camp is open free of charge to children ages 3-7, jr. leaders 10-12 years, and teens enrolled in high school. Another amazing aspect of our camp is that we strive to be 100% organic, non-gmo and local grown meals and snacks. This allows for the children to spend their summer with the opportunity to detox their bodies and minds. During this crucial brain development period, these children are being fueled with healthy choices. Our camp also helps to provide first to work moms the opportunity not only work alongside their children while gaining training skills but fulfill their needed hours. Another amazing feature is we have university students participate as interns to help them with their practicums. This camp is designed to provide ample opportunities to the community to help all sorts of members succeed and meet their goals. We typically have 2 interns and 3-5 first to work parents attend our camp.

Holiday Christmas Party/Support: This is another backbone of our program which helps to raise the self-esteem and self-worth of the homeless children. While Christmas might seem not a necessity in life, it is truly life-changing to hundreds of our homeless children living in extreme poverty. Having Santa and his elves actually deliver gifts specifically for that child in need is a life changing experience for these precious children. Most of these children have never had a Christmas, a tree, or a hot meal, a family gathering, nothing as we deem normal. When Santa brings their hearts desire (which is typically a simple toy or a life need), these children truly feel loved and wanted, cared about other than in their world of abandonment. This actual event of having SANTA CARE has an life long lasting impression on the child. As one example is of a 10 year old child who received a Barbie doll... she actually held that doll for over 8 years with her, move after move, hung on to the symbol of what that Barbie meant. Years after she took that Barbie to her dorm room at college. Going to college is a hardship for even the middle class society these days. It is unheard of to even have a homeless child graduate high-school and is really not a normal thought process to attend college. This little girl had a spark in her heart on that Christmas Eve night that she was worth more than what was being represented to her. She is now a college grad, stopped her cycle of poverty and will continue to prosper. We were able to expand to Maui and provide 157 homeless children living in cars and high in the mountains with Christmas gifts, a party in the park to include them decorating a Christmas tree to sit under with the elves and open gifts from Santa. On the Big Island the holiday party had to be canceled, so we had COVID CHRISTMAS and the children who were able drove through a fun maze of collecting their Santa gifts, hot holiday meal, meal boxes, hygiene bags, stockings, and were able to visit Santa Corner for a quick photo. For children in remote areas of the island, or without transportation we were able to deliver their items island wide. Providing 685 children with their Christmas wishes. Big Island children are also provided their Christmas wishes when they are sponsored by loving donors. Children on the island of O'ahu will have their Christmas eve filled with Santa and his elves arrivals all along the water's edge and high in the mountains. From sunup to sundown Santa will assure that all the 186 children are cared for. This year due to the encampment cleansweeps conducted by the state, so many children were displaced and not in a stable encampment. This caused us to really have to search harder to assure no child was left out. We also adopted a preschool for homeless children with attendance of 60 toddlers.

OUTREACH and AWARENESS PROGRAM /COVID KOKUA: Due to covid we had to increase our program services and actually open up more chapters with more team leaders to assure our homeless children were well cared for and not left out of their schooling support, providing more meals since they aren't eating at school, etc. Our monthly program turned into a weekly program for the first 16 weeks of the COVID shut down, and then depending on need was modified per island and area. We included Maui in our outreach this year as well. While this is what makes the difference year round to the children we provide service to, it is basic and simply put. Our volunteers conduct outreach throughout the month to various homeless encampments, seek out new homeless families and keep track of those in our program. We provide monthly hygiene and food boxes. Clothing and life necessities on a scheduled basis. As well provide emergency care for those who have either just became homeless or had an issue with their current living situations. We provide tents, cook stoves, sleeping bags, pillows, clothing, food, etc for those in need. Our primary focus is to provide the immediate needs of every child we encounter during our outreach. We do have a lack of storage so have not been able to have as much supplies on hand as we had hoped for this year. As well, we have faced so many encampment closures due to clean-sweeps of the state. This has caused a hardship on our agency to try to help the homeless families re-establish and replace all that was lost to the sweeps. In addition, we have provided more hygiene gift cards and stopped our food boxes, rather we give meal cards. It is easier for them to use and they don't have to worry about hauling heavy food when asked to leave. We do not provide emergency outreach during the months of our summer educational program and Christmas due to lack of funding. Our full time count for each Island: Maui 157 children, Big Island 408 children, and O'ahu 186 = 1088 children on a full-time basis during our COVID KOKUA outreach program

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