 Welcome to Seymour's World on Think Tech Hawaii. Last week, we had Beth Ann Kozlovich of Kahimohala, who opened our eyes to mental illness in adolescence. It's amazing. It's not just here in Hawaii. It's all over the world. Do you realize, though, how many children are victims of abuse, divorce, have lost their parents or their parents are incarcerated? Who takes care of them? Today, I wanted to focus on a model here in Hawaii called Kids Hurt To. It's a model for the country and the world to assist children and help them to a transition point into a normal life. Kids Hurt To Hawaii provides grieving children and youth aged from three to 17 years old a safe space to connect with others, to tell their stories, and express their feelings of loss, fear, anguish, and confusion. I would like to introduce you to Michael Moore, hello Michael, and Hiro Ito of Kids Hurt To. Now, Hiro, you have been here several times with me because you know my heart is with Kids Hurt To, and even though I have many programs that I'm involved in mentoring young children, Kids Hurt To is the closest thing to my heart because I know you help so many people. So thank you for coming. And Michael, you are the new executive director who I just met a few weeks ago for Kids Hurt To, and you have an amazing amount of experience in all types of foundations to help kids. But I saw in you and I see it in Hiro something that I don't see in a lot of people. That is a passion, a passion to help. So I'm going to open this up to you and I'm going to ask you a question, Michael. Why did you choose Kids Hurt To? That's a great question. Before I get to that, let me just say we're really happy to be here. Thank you for the invitation. You're welcome. Why did I choose Kids Hurt To? If I can make this brief, I didn't really choose Kids Hurt To Hawaii. They chose me. Here's how. I worked next door for 10 years and I became more and more familiar with the work that they did and I was more and more intrigued as time went by because they serve so many families and they seemed to be very, very happy. I had no idea these were grieving children who had lost a parent or someone else in the family for any reason. And I was working at another organization and I got a call and was asked, would you like to become the executive director for Kids Hurt To Hawaii? And I said, yes, immediately. I had one phone interview with one board member who I actually knew and was offered a contract before I even met any of the rest of the board. So I'm there because they came and found me and I tell you there's not a non-profit in Hawaii that I'd rather be working for. Oh, I'd love to hear that, Michael. Not just because you're working there but because I know how important it is to help these kids. A lot of us that are in the outside world and I'm using the word outside world don't understand how many children suffer, how many children, little ones from one, two, three, four years old. What happens when their parents are in jail? Where do they go? Who can they rely on? Hiro, tell us a little bit about the programming. Okay, Kids Hurt To Hawaii has been in Hawaii 17 years. And then we provide services for all children who are grieving, separation from parents or one of parents or family members through death, divorce. Parents are incarcerated. Also nowadays, foster children are in use. They are all grieving and some of them, a lot of them are traumatized. So we just provide peer support group for the children and teens and also adults, the guardians and parents. And then we just do the groups on a regular basis every month. And then also at the weekend base, we have a different organization and work with different events. And then some of them are surfing events, some of them are in ocean activities, some of them are beach making, some of them are ukulele in the music. You know, events and many, many events that we do. And I think Hiro, from my experience with you, besides you being an excellent ping-pong player, because you and I have had many of those. You do more than just work here. You also go to Japan, don't you? That was after the tsunami. We did like four past five years. And then at this moment, my focus is in Hawaii. In Hawaii, yes. But you were able to help a lot of children around the world, right? Especially in Japan, because of what happened during that tsunami period. That's correct. It was really, really amazing. I credit you and your wife, Cynthia, who was the ED of a few years ago, and basically who started the program and got it going. So I want everybody to know that you were there from the beginning. And I really appreciate everything that you do for these kids as well. Thank you so much. So Michael, tell me, let's get back to the business side of this thing. Okay. How does kids hurt to function? What can we do to help kids hurt to? How do they function? Oh, that's a broad question I can answer in different ways. If I can, just elaborate a little bit on the programming. I think people don't understand just how unique the peer support groups are and the mentoring activities are that we do on the weekends. And how they really contribute to the mission of the organization. These grieving children, they're grieving from either loss of a parent and victimization due to exposure to crime. And they break into age similar groups. The little children, the bigger children, youth, and parents. And the work that they do in those groups is very, very healing. But that's just still, it's just a really close, tight knit group. It doesn't really expose them to the community and to get them back out there and live in their lives the way they might. So that's why the organization for years and really under the leadership of HERO has created all these partnerships with folks in the community to do the surfing or to do bead making, jewelry making, gardening. All kinds of different things. So our families get exposed to other families and the kids get exposed to other kids, etc. And they build their own networks. It's all part of the healing process. I think that's wonderful, Michael, because when I go and I visit you guys and I see the different rooms that you have for the different age appropriate kids. And then I go downstairs to where you have Hawaii Rising going. Is it high rising? Where high rising is starting to, and we'll talk about that in the second half of the show. I just see that the kids don't just have a place to go and to be. But they can start looking towards the future. That's correct. They can start looking at what can happen from here. And I know in my program with you, you are in charge program we had. That program itself was to help them just transition into society, be able to go to school, go to work, do what has to be done. But you're dealing with smaller kids, very, very young kids. All the way down to age three. All the way down to age three, oh my God. And how many are there? On a given night, we can work with 45 total family members. So it could be 15 children, 15 youth, and 15 caregivers. And the caregivers, of course, could be the remaining parent, a foster parent, or some other legal guardian. That's the max we can do. Now we've started holding groups a minimum of two times a week, and that may actually go up being as how we receive new funding. So our services have not really doubled, but we've definitely expanded in the last couple of months. Wonderful. But still, these families stay with us for a year, maybe two years. So I want to make sure we're being clear. We can serve anywhere up to, we're striving toward 300 families that would come in and work with us for a year. 300 families. Yeah, over the course of a year, or maybe even more. And the families, and this is one thing that's really special in two ways, both from the business aspect, but also from the programmatic aspect, they can come as long as they want until they feel like they are in a place where they don't need us anymore, for example. But what I've learned and taken on this position is that these families keep coming back. These children that were seven are now back as 14-year-olds or 16-year-olds and volunteering. They keep coming back because it's a very safe environment, very friendly, very emotionally supportive. I mean, all of us have suffered losses. And I can't deny that coming on board as the executive director and seeing these families, I see their grief, but then I see their happiness. It also puts me in touch with the losses that I've experienced and reminds me of things that occurred back when I was a child. So it's not just healing for the families, but it's beneficial for the personnel and the volunteers. So that's how we function on the programmatic side, mostly. If you walk into the rooms, and especially if you come during dinnertime and you see these families, you're gonna be like me. You're gonna go, I wanna volunteer, or I wanna give you money. And that's how the agency- That's how you guys got me, you went to volunteer. You walk in, you can't help it. And that's part of the way the agency has function in the past. People come in and if they have some wealth or if they just wanna give, they're like, I wanna help, can I give you some money or is there something I can do? Can I share some of my expertise with your kids or your youth? And we take advantage, we take advantage, opportunity to bring those people in in various capacities to help out in the way that they can best. And I was so surprised, within my first month, I mean, I checked for thousands of dollars from just independent people going, hey, thanks for what you do. Here's four grand, here's five grand, 10 grand. The money just comes from all over and we have depended on that to keep the doors open. Now we are attempting to expand by using other funding sources, funding streams, including larger foundation contracts. Hopefully, we're hoping to get a contract with Aloha United Way to support our efforts in high rising, which we can talk about later. And then we did just receive the Victims of Crime Act funding under the Department of Justice through the AG's office, which is now allowing us to provide our families extra services for those who have, of any age, all the way up to the parents who have been exposed to crime. Like you've mentioned in the intro, there are way too many that are exposed to crime. So let's talk a little bit about, you have an event coming up, right? You have a major fundraiser. We do. And it's the third annual. Correct. And I was very lucky on the first year, right? Was I the first one? Yes, I was honored on the first year of your fundraiser and here it's your third year and you have 400 people coming. And the thing that I wanna tell everybody out there, you have no idea how wonderful it is to see these kids talk about what Kids Hurt 2 Hawaii does for them. And that's one of the raison d'etre that we have at Kids Hurt 2, is the kids come back when they're a little bit older and they say, this is how I got straightened out. This is what I needed. This is, it was like a second home to me, if not the first home. So thank you to you guys for doing that. That's exactly why it's so important that we help your organization, why people donate money to you, why people, if they have expertise, like my expertise. And we talked about that, Michael, to try to help out the older kids, the foster kids. Anything that people can do, they should at least have a look at Kids Hurt 2. Come and visit, make an appointment with them. Have a look at the place. Come and see those kids in the evening and your heart will open and your wallet, it will open because it really is such a wonderful, wonderful way to help kids get through a very, very difficult time in their life. So you guys are doing great. We wanna show some pictures, can we? Absolutely. All right, Robert, if you can pull them up. Go ahead, Hiro, who is this? This is, what's their name again? Hiro on the left. Yes, I'm on your screen. Yes, I'm smiling. And Anjali in the middle, and Lila. And they are, they are, you know, the one of them, you know, right? She used to come to the Kids Hurt 2 Hawaii when she was young, she lost, you know, her mother died. And then Lila, she's a friend of her. Then they come to Kids Hurt 2, I mean, High Rising to volunteer for a week. So then we just, you know, doing a lot of stuff with the High Rising and then they just come up with so many different ideas. Wait till we talk about High Rising or the second half. You folks out there watching are wondering, what is High Rising? We'll tell you all about it in the second half. What's the next one? Let's see the next one. Oh, Michael. Oh, you want me to talk about it? Go ahead, Michael, yeah. I think this is a relationship actually that Hero started. In the middle, you'll see Wallace, a cow of a cow boards. He works out in Waianae and he builds the most beautiful hardwood cutting boards. Oh, I saw them in the store, right? They're in the store and they're expensive, relatively speaking, they're not that bad, but they're one of the more expensive things that we have and they sell like hotcakes. You've got to come in and get them. He's got boards of various sizes, attergala coming up, one of the auction items is literally a molded single chunk of monkey pod turned into a cutting board. It is a one of a kind. I don't even know what it would be worth. I have to tell you, and again, we'll get back to this in the second half. That store is unbelievable. You gave me a tour of this store and I just love so much of it, it's custom made. It's not stuff that you'll find anywhere else. So we're going to talk about that a little bit later. Now, I'm sorry, but we have to take a quick break and pay for the show somehow. And then we will be back in the second half. My two guests are Michael Moore and Hiro Eto of Kids Her to Hawaii, one of the most important organizations you can help by giving the money or your expertise to help young kids. We'll be back in a minute. And Aloha, my name is Calvin Griffin, the host of Hawaii in Uniform. And every Friday at 11 o'clock here on Think Tech Hawaii, we bring in the latest in what's happening within the military community. And we also invite all your response to things that's happening here. For those of you who haven't seen the program before, again, we invite your participation. We're here to give information, not disinformation. And we always enjoy response from the public. But join us here, Hawaii in Uniform, Fridays, 11 a.m. here on Think Tech Hawaii. Aloha. Hey, Stan Energyman here on Think Tech Hawaii. And they won't let me do political commentary. So I'm stuck doing energy stuff, but I really like energy stuff. So I'm going to keep on doing it. So join me every Friday on Stan Energyman at lunchtime, at noon, on my lunch hour. We're going to talk about everything energy, especially if it begins with the word hydrogen. We're going to definitely be talking about it. We'll talk about how we can make Hawaii cleaner, how we can make the world a better place, just basically save the planet. Even Miss America can't even talk about stuff like that anymore. We got it nailed down here. So we'll see you on Friday at noon with Stan Energyman. Aloha. Hi, welcome back to Seymour's World on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm so excited about this show today because it's interesting. On last week's show with Bethanne Koslowicz, some people said, you know, that's a hard thing to take what's going on with the adolescents and the mental hospital, Kahimahala. And today we're talking about the little kids. How do we help these little kids that are three years old, four years old and five years old and no parents or parents are in jail or somebody dies and who helps them out? This organization, Kids Her to Hawaii, is what it's all about. This is the place where 300 families and more, if we can help them, will be able to find a refuge. They'll be able to find a place to call home when they need it, to have friends to play with when they need it. So let me get back to the show because I can get on a soapbox and that's not a good idea. Michael Moore, hero at Hito. Welcome back to Seymour's World. You guys are doing wonderful work and as you can see, I'm very excited about you here. Let's go back to some of our pictures, Robert. Go ahead. This is James Lavery and he's the one with a participant. He grew up and as a former foster youth, I mean foster youth and then he's been coming to our program I think about six, seven years already and took a training, become a facilitator. And a partner for my executive director of Hito to Hawaii. Next. That's Likeke. He's Likeke and Iyuko Uchida and from Japan. And Likeke was, you know, he was also participating in Hito to Hawaii since his nine after his father died. And he came to... He was at the fundraiser, yes. He spoke actually. He went and also this meeting and he become a facilitator. He took training and he's such an amazing young man. So here you have a young man like him who starts off as a youth in your program, right? Needs help and you guys guide him a little bit and now he's coming back to help out. Amazing, amazing. Let's keep going. What's the other photo? This one was when we kind of, when we did film shooting for the... Career changes to me, not to take anything away from Seymour's world, but we were gifted a spot on Rich Fagel's show and all of these folks came in, here we got on the phone and said, hey, can you come in and help us? Next thing you know, we have all these volunteers to, you know, shoppers and to... But most of them, almost everyone of them has been involved in the program to some degree, either as family members being served or as volunteer facilitators. Or form of foster youth. Or form of foster youth and just people who love the program. That's terrific. Now, the next slide is the one that everybody... I've had like three or four phone calls already. What is High Rising? So let's bring up the logo for High Rising and we'll let you guys talk about it. Hiro, you are the one who started this whole thing with High Rising. I remember that first conversation that you and I had about it and I said, Hiro, I don't know if it's gonna work. I don't know if this thing... But man, have you done a great job with it. So tell us about it. So this is the logo of the kit, High Rising. And then this was designed by Yusne Makana. He's 19 years old and he's been coming to Kitsa to Hawaii about 10 years. And then when we start talking, Patria former ED, she had an idea of the workforce development and then we needed the logo. We just started doing brainstorming. And then Makana, he's very quiet but he loves to drawing and stuff. Then he started drawing. And some of these products are all about it. That's all his hand drawing. Go ahead and talk about it here. Okay, so this is a cap. But I just wanna talk about the logos. So he just hand-drawn and we really liked it. And then so we just ask him, get the palm each one from him. Then we send it to the graphic designer. And then a graphic designer just slightly modified it. Then it just become our logo and then become our store name. So before you came into the organization, you and I and Patria had a conversation about the store. How do you set up a store? How are the kids gonna benefit from the store? It's not a matter of making money, but can you train kids to understand retail, purchasing, inventory management, all these different things? And you guys said you could do it. And now there is a store called High Rising. And the store is that, you can tell people. Okay, so store is, we used to use the office for the Hawaii Foster Youth Coalition and use drop-in center in essence. So we've been doing like a past 17 years, 16 years, then this idea come up. So Patria and I, then the name of logo came up because of the Makana. And then so we started developing a curriculum, which is Michael Keanex. I can speak to that, yeah. Yeah, go ahead, Michael. Well, I tell you the backstory before I even worked for the organization and Patria was working with Hero, and he just had like one thing in that whole building space. She goes, I'm creating a social enterprise workforce development project to train foster youth how to get and keep a good job. And I'm like, what are you talking about? The place is empty, what do you mean? She goes, we're gonna turn this into a big store. I'm like, okay, let's see what you can do. And the coffee shop too, right? Yeah, I didn't even know about that. But I've known Patria for a long time, so I didn't mind joking with her. But she did a lot of research, formerly at Consuelo Foundation, spent a lot of time in the Philippines. So she got to see social enterprise workforce development projects operating in the Philippines. And she did her due diligence, brought the concepts back, and then worked with Hero. And it was just the two of them, really, to start putting it together. I came back about a year later, and instead of just one item on the floor, this whole place was filled with counters and clothing racks. And the coffee shop was there. And the kids, literally the youth that were brought in for the first three month trial period, they distressed the wood, painted, did all this stuff to make it really unique. I mean, you got to come in and see it. You've seen it. I've seen it. Everybody else out there, come in. I told my wife I wanted to come because I love the uniqueness of the products that are in there. So the store is located at? Where? It is at the Kukui Center, 245 North Kukui Street. And our organization address is Suite 203. But if you walk into the first floor of the Kukui Center and everyone is welcome, goes straight into the, the door is yellow, right? But it's typically open. You'll see it. It looks like a store. It's like any kind of Waikiki style boutique you might see anywhere down in that area. Except the merchandise that you have in there is so individually crafted by a lot of artisans. So it's like going to a craft fair somewhere and finding a guy that's made cutting boards like you were talking about. Or some of the hats or the clothing. I mean, these items that we're seeing here in front of us, those are all custom made just for high rising. And I think that's why you're not just getting local people coming in, tourists are loving it too. So if you need gifts for Christmas, if you need gifts for birthdays, whatever it is, this is such a great cause to go in and buy. Your prices are more than reasonable. I mentioned to you, I think you should hike up your prices to make a higher profit. But for the consumer, go in there. Go in there and buy a water bottle. Go in and buy a hat or a bag or jewelry you have, clothing that you have in there. It's an absolutely fantastic store. And what I like about it is that you're training kids. You're training these foster kids on how to work. I totally skipped that part. Hero turned it over to me to talk about the curriculum. And we have to give credit to a mixture of different people that I'd like to. But the Geiss Foundation, they have to admit they care about foster kids like crazy. And they provided the seed money for Patreon Hero to kick this thing off at the end of 2017. But they've given us additional funds now to support the development of a really thorough seven component curriculum. And we have hired a contractor person to put that together, who is now working with our training coordinator to get parts of it are done, parts of it are already in place. And to make sure that the foster youth don't just come in and walk around and try and sell t-shirts or dresses, but they do actually learn marketing, computer literacy, personal and business finances, a mixture of different things. And the eighth component of the curriculum is the emotional support that they get from the healing young hearts. The kids are two staff who are working with the kids and the youth in the evenings. But if they ever have a particular need, like they get upset or angry, which does happen when you live a stressful life. People are there to be able to walk them through it. It is really comprehensive. It is a good place for youth to learn, to get a job and keep a job. By the time they're done, they should feel very confident that an employer is gonna hire them and keep them on board and that they truly have something to offer. I love it. I mean, this is what kids heard to is all about. So we've discussed the younger ones. We've discussed the foster youth, right, who are older and are starting to understand there's a life after school and a life after all the issues that they have. You and I, Michael talked about when you and I met the first time about how important it is to get these children. And I use the word children loosely, obviously, because they can span from three years old until 24 years old, right, for some of the guys that we have in there. I think it's important for people to understand the assistance they need is not one meeting. They may be there for years and how do you fund something like that? You don't charge them for this. So everything, there's no money that you're getting except for donations from either organizations or from people or your own fundraisers. So the support that we need from people on the outside is exactly what we're talking about. Helping these kids, helping them, helping you help the kids is the way to make sure that these kids have a normal life. I think that's fantastic, Michael. Just great. Thanks, I'm glad to be a part of it. I really am. I have to say, Michael, that first conversation we had, you and I, and the conversation that Hero and I have had over the years, it always comes down to the same thing. We're all doing the same thing, whether it's my Make Him Smile program that I use for kids in the hospital, what you guys do, all of us are trying to give children a better life and you are doing such a great job of it. Now, you have one minute left to say the last thing you would like to our audience. The last thing, oh man, there's so many last things that we could say. Oh, we only have one minute, I'm sorry. But here's what I've been thinking about as this viewing or filming has gone on. And that is that I really want people to be aware of their own losses and as a means to have empathy and understanding for the families that we work with. We've all lost someone to death or just lost someone and maybe they were incarcerated or they got deployed. I mean, these little kids are losing their parents for a mixture of reasons and sometimes they return and sometimes a lot of times the kids, there's thousands of kids that have been pulled from the home due to abuse or neglect and put in foster care and they may return to their families, which is ideal, but during the time that they're away, that's the part I want everyone in your viewing audience to relate to and realize that these guys, these little kids and these youth, they need support because it's traumatizing. And so I just would ask everyone out there to think about their own losses, decide how can you help kids who are too white to serve these kids, because we will take any form of help that we can get. Thank you, Michael, very well said hero. Thank you, a pleasure to see both of you again. I am thrilled and honored that you have come on to the show and spread the message out. For you guys, we will be back on November 2nd. I'm on my way to China, where we're going to be doing a show hopefully from China if we can get the government to let us lose over there, but we're gonna try to do a Seymour's World from China. Then I will see you on November the 2nd, which is going to be an amazing day. We have a positive, fun, enlightening show. There's music is gonna be involved. It should be a lot of fun, but I hope you got as much out of this show as I did because thanks to kids her too, we're making a better life for kids today. Aloha from Seymour's World.