 Aloha and welcome to your Thursday afternoon. Thank you Think Tech Hawaii for giving us the space and time for the Hawaii Food and Farmer series. My name is Justine Espiritu and this is my co-host Matthew Johnson. Every week we feature farmers as well as other individuals and organizations that are growing food or contributing to our local food system. It's great when we have the farmers and producers and distributors and also great to have like today organizations that are touching on our food system and also other elements that bring in culture and community. So Matt, if you could introduce this week's guest. Great, thanks Justine. So this week we have Kaulani Odom and Kashiho from Kukua Kalehihi Valley. Also with Roots Program. And we've already said that we're gonna need much more than just 30 minutes to get through all the amazing things that they're working on. But basically talking about a cafe and cultural food hub that they've been working on to help really restore the health of an entire community in Kalehihi Valley. So thank you so much for being on the show. And we've had the pleasure of hanging out for the past 16 months through Hawaii Investment Ready. So I'm really excited to have you guys on here and just kind of get in a little bit about what you're working on and talk about some of the different programs. So to get started, Kashiho, why don't you give us a little background on Roots Program? Sure, thanks for having us, by the way, nice to be here with you. So the Roots Program is a program of Kukua Kalehihi Valley. We are a community health clinic located in Kalehihi. And the community health clinic has been around for about 45 years. Started as a really grassroots community effort. Some aunties in the community who were going door to door, knocking on people's doors and asking them what kinds of needs they had. And at the time, the needs that they were really lifting up were about healthcare access to doctors and dentists. So we had a community effort for a local church to donate land. We had a trailer on there with doctors who were volunteering their time. And then community outreach workers who were making sure that the community got the kind of healthcare that they needed. Since that time, we've expanded into, I think we have nine different sites now. We have all sorts of different programs. And our program that you and I work on is called the Roots Program. It's kind of the food side of things. So in addition to the health center that has sort of your traditional exam rooms with doctors and dentists, part of the community health center is also a 99 acre nature preserve in the back of Kalehihi Valley, where we grow food and share food with the community. It's also an agroforestry program. And so we're sort of stewarding the land up there. And I feel really fortunate to work for an organization that really sees the health of the community as connected to the health of the land and the health of our relationships with each other. So that's what we do with the Roots Program, is we use food as a vehicle for healing. So healing our bodies, but also healing the land and the process, healing our relationships in the community, healing our cultures. And yeah, food just really provides us an opportunity to do a lot of that kind of work, so that's what we're up to. Now for those that are around, the very first Crater Festival was actually a fundraiser to get money to build our very first clinic. It was within Diamond Head Crater. It was in Diamond Head Crater, yeah. Dory Rotland, who was our first ED, as Kashi said, got his church to convince him that what a colleague he really needed was a health clinic. And so they sold their church and land, and we built the clinic out of that. And it was in 1976? It was about 45 years ago. And then, so the very beginning of our program was these super anti-Zekashis talking about. And some of the others that had been working in our community a long time, they sat down and we had an opportunity to apply for a grant. And they wanted to know what were all the, when you hear about Kalihi, everyone always thinks about gangs or lower socioeconomic or all the immigrants come again. And what they did was they sat around the table and they thought about, what are all the real strengths of Kalihi? Let's be strength-based, let's be really positive and look at it. And what they realized was in talking about the strength that food was this connecting factor through everything that you could tell your stories, whether you're from Samoa or Hawaii or Micronesia, that you all use the same plants. You may call them different names, you may use them in different ways, but you all use the same plants. And the very act of sharing food or passing down stories, that cultural connection ran through all of our valleys. So our very initial roots were starting off using food as a connection. And then how did it connect us to our land? If you don't care about your land, then you're unhealthy. And so all those connections that make us healthy, food connecting us to our spirit, food connecting us to our grandparents, food connecting us to our stories, a lot of times Western medicine thinks of health as food as a carbohydrate or protein and a fat. But we realize that the really healthy part of food is the great connection and that feeling connected to your community is just as important as knowing what your blood pressure is when it comes to being healthy. Well, so I mean, it's obviously a real holistic approach of what you guys are doing, so it's taking a lot of planning. So in the back of the valley, you have the agroforestry, the forest restoration, the health center, and then all kind of connecting. Like you said, if you don't have good food going into the community, then you're going to have bad effects on the other end. And I guess that's kind of where Roots Cafe originated where you guys were growing all the food, having connection with different farmers. Kato, can you talk a little bit about the origins of Roots Cafe and also talk about what can someone expect when they walk into the cafe? Sure. So we do have out of the 100 acres that's attached in the back of the valley attached. And I really believe we're the only federally qualified health center that has a land base attached to it because we believe in the transformation that the land can do on your health. And so that I just want to interrupt and say, I mean, that's huge, what you just said. I mean, actually have land where people are growing on that's directly attached to the health center because it's a typical health center as you just go in and you get some kind of medicine or whatever your problem is. Well, we're not just growing food. I mean, we have the forest. And when they started, first started the forestry program, people said, you can't grow coal. You can't reintroduce it organically. You need to control for this and that. And it's been shown now that, yes, our cause thriving up there. And so you can do it. So it's the whole overall health. It's not just about food. The iron can be transformative in many, many ways. And so we use all of those ways to do that. But the cafe, when we outgrew, like Kasha said, we have nine sites. We have our clinic. We have our elders. We have our Kvi program. We have our sewing program. We kind of outgrew our clinic. And so we brought what those people again that have been around was the old PMP supermarket, which was in Kalihi, right across from our clinic. And that became the wellness center where our dental and our pediatricians and our OBs are. But we had, there's a little certified cafe, certified kitchen that could be a cafe. And the first intent was to lease it out to someone, but we didn't want to do that. We wanted to run it ourselves. And so that was the very beginning of it. And then Kasha was brought on when we started to really expand and to look at all of the ways that this cafe and the food hub could be beneficial in the community. So in addition to the cafe, which is open for lunch, open to the public, actually, for lunch Tuesdays and Thursdays from 11 to 1, and it's situated right in the health clinic. So you kind of have to know it's there. But we serve lunch during those times at the cafe, but we're also at two farmers markets every week in Kalihi Valley. And we actually run a farmer's market at KBT Housing on Thursday afternoons from four to six. And we run an ABT double bucks program there. So if you have SNAP benefits, you can come and swipe your ABT card for up to $20. And that money is matched so you can spend up to $40 with local farmers and fishermen who are selling at the farmer's market. It's such an additional benefit and an initiative for someone who is using ABT to focus on using the ABT money that they have on preferably better local food. And it started with Wholesome Wave. It was a mainland initiative that we partnered up with and we started, but now Aloha Care has picked that up. And so they're also subsidizing. But it was being reactive to what our community needed. And Cuyil Park Terrace is the largest public housing unit on Oahu. And we're right on the corner. And what we heard from them, that transportation to get good food, to get local and fresh foods and vegetables was difficult. And so we decided to do a little farmer's market right in the parking lot there. We ran a competition. And one of the kids came up with the name of the crop shop. And so that's what we call it. And we just have, you know, several booths. We also have Pakua fishermen that goes to the auction and gets fresh fish. And families are able to, sometimes they can't afford a whole fish by themselves, but they can pool their money together and get a whole fish. And this will last them for a longer time. And they're also able to, we provide space where they're able to share their stories about food and how to grow things and different recipes. And so at the market, are you guys participating as a vendor with the cafe serving prepared food or selling some of the produce that you're growing? Or this is just a space you're giving for other vendors to come in to share their produce? Yeah, we're actually just running the ABT booth and managing the market. So we do run what we call a mobile farmers market at the same time. We were noticing that a lot of the patients and staff who are in the clinic weren't able, even though it's like right across the street, weren't able to make it to the farmers market before six when it closes. So we started just piling up a push cart of vegetables and wheeling it around the clinic. And people loved that. So we were really just meeting people where they're at. If you're sitting in the exam room or at your desk, you're able to just buy your groceries for the day right there. And so we do run a mobile farmers market where we have some of the produce there that we're selling for the farmers too. So that's one of the many things that we're trying to do. The mobile farmers market has been really quite popular. So we just took it to the seniors because our two senior centers are not at the same site as our clinic and wellness center and they literally get mobbed. And they want them to come every week. And we don't quite have the manpower for that. But now we've also been asked by several community organizations and schools, oh, can the mobile market come to them? And so there's definitely a need in the community. And we're finding that, you know, for all of the whatever it be, transportation and other issues that if we can get the fresh produce and and our cart and that right up to that space, then people have better access and we're able to serve them better. I like your guys focus on on access. It's one of the things Aloha, I'm Katie, the president of the grass root Institute. Realizing that the conveniency needs to be there. You can say, yeah, you should be supporting local farmers. You should be eating this kind of food. But if that convenient and if it's not affordable, then it's just not going to happen. So it seems like you guys are addressing both those issues very well. Yeah, we're also learning because we're not doing a great we're not we have almost barely any markup on it. And so as we're trying to get bigger and bigger, we're realizing that, and you know, even for stuff like poi in our community, we don't market up at all. We just want our community to have access to poi and kalo. But as you get bigger, and as you have to start ordering more and have to figuring out, you know, laws and not selling and all of that kind of stuff, we're still trying to figure out a way to make it a win win situation for everybody involved. That's great. That's a great segue into the cultural food hub. And so we've had different groups talking about food hubs before, but you guys definitely have a slightly different twist to it. Kasia, why don't you talk about the food hub you guys are doing? Yeah, so the food hub is sort of new effort, but it's really sort of a conglomeration of the efforts that we've been engaged in for the last several years. And we really try to source everything that we do from what the community actually needs. So we're constantly getting feedback from people about what they want, where they see things working, where they see things not working in the local food system. And one of the things that kept sort of coming up in conversation was that folks in Kalihi really don't have enough access to, especially the culturally significant foods to the different cultures in Kalihi Valley. So unless you kind of know somebody that's growing those things, it's hard to find them at the supermarkets, even hard to find them at the farmers market. So, you know, Ulu, breadfruit, Uwala, sweet potato, kalo, cassava, some of those major sort of culturally really significant foods that everyone is wanting in Kalihi are there's actually just more demand than there is supply. So we heard that and thought we could really start to bring in some of those foods into the valley and get them out through this cultural food hub. And it provides a service to farmers too, in that especially with the Double Bucks Program, farmers are able to get the foods that they love growing to the communities that actually really love eating those things. They know what they are, their grandma used to make them or they used to grow them back home. But rather than having to export them to a different market, they can actually sell them to local folks here in the community and make a living doing that too. So we're just trying to make those connections between local farmers, local communities that want that food. That's awesome. And I think you're doing that in a bunch of ways, other than just having the farmers market, you guys have a lot of great creative events that you put on. So we're going to take a quick break and then get more into some of those things. Aloha everyone. I hope you've been watching Sink Tech Hawaii. But I'm here to invite you to watch me on Viva Hawaii every Monday at 3 p.m. I'm waiting for you. Mahalo. Good afternoon. Howard Wiig, Cold Green, ThinkTechHawaii.com. I appear on Mondays at 3 o'clock and my gig is energy efficiency doing more with less. It's the most cost effective way that we in Hawaii are going to achieve 100% clean energy by the year 2045. I look forward to being with you. Aloha. Aloha and welcome to The Savvy Chick Show on ThinkTech Hawaii. I'm the weekly host at 11 a.m. Honolulu time. I'm very excited for the next six weeks. We have the Aspire series, which is all about the coolest careers I could find and interviewing and getting insights from these amazing people who want to share it with you and help you live your dreams. Look forward to seeing you on the show. Aloha. Aloha and welcome back to the Hawaii Freedom Farmer series. I'm your co-host Matt Schutton here with, as always, not actually always, but most of the time Justina Spear too. And our guests today are from Kokua Kilihi Valley. We have with us Kasha and Kaya. Thank you so much for joining us today. And yeah, unfortunately, we don't much time, so we're just going to get right back into it. Kasha, you had left us all talking about how you guys are connecting farmers growing indigenous crops with the communities that are really looking for those crops and have a tough time accessing that. Can you talk a little bit about, let's talk about some of the events that you guys are doing, the Pena events. So I recently had a Ulu event. I know there's another event. There's a banana event coming up. Can you talk a little bit about those events? And what's kind of the purpose behind those events? Sure. So we have a network of folks as part of the cultural food hub, ranging all the way from farmers and food producers to community members, schools, organizations, folks on the eating end of the food chain, who are really interested in kind of building those relationships to start proliferating cultural foods in Kalihi. And we try to get together fairly frequently, about once every quarter. And we've been having working meetings, but also an opportunity for people to get together and share their stories behind the food, which has been really fun. And like you said, our last Paina gathering was centered around Ulu. So we kind of transformed the cafe into this really nice sort of mood lit Laohala mats on the floor. And then we had, oh yeah, there's photos. This is our co-worker, Menina Opet, who is Chikis. And this is the Chikis version of Ulu Pa'i'i, essentially. So they make kon, which is pounded Ulu, similar to the way that we make pa'i'i in Hawaii. But the board is shaped a little differently. The pounding stone is made out of coral instead of out of stone. And she was able to show us how they pound it, how they wrap it up in the Ulu leaves. And then she shared the stories from her culture too about all of the different uses and preservation methods. And it was a really wonderful cultural sharing opportunity and kind of informal groupings of people talking about breadfruit and its different uses and its different significance to themselves and their families. So we're just trying to create those kinds of spaces too for food to really bring in all that it has to offer to the community. It also gives us a chance to be creative with our menus and our servings. So if we have an Ulu thing then everything is great. So we had Ulu Hummus and Ulu Chips and Ulu Burgers and you know just and so we like to have fun with the food and to present it in ways that you know even though we're promoting cultural foods there's there's such a multitude of ways you can cook and prepare it. And sometimes we get stuck into thinking we can only do it in certain ways. So we try and take those foods and make all kind of foods out of it so people can see that they can do a lot of things with the foods. For the bananas you know most people are just interested in I mean are just used to eating the bananas but really there's all difference there's a flour there's the you know the fruit there's we can use the stems for plates we can use the whole banana and how do we do that and so that something will be focusing on when the banana event comes up. I'm also serving Iholena banana in our cafe or at some and this is one of our indigenous varieties of banana that we're purchasing from one of the farmers in our food hub and it's a really nice creamy it's got almost a light orange color it's higher in beta carotene and so bringing back some of those foods you know it's not all dull Chiquita bananas out there there's other bananas and so how do we bring back those varieties and have them in our community. It's great I think you know when we talk about the the reputation of the stories people outside of Kalihi know about Kalihi you are doing this work as a resource to the community that's there but it's also great for those outside of the community to get a different perspective do you have a lot of folks coming from all over the island to kind of join in these events? In the Paine gatherings yeah we do we have we work with farmers from all over the island and so folks are coming in from different places and then Kalihi's really our focus but like you said I think what we're doing here is kind of inspiring all kinds of work within and outside of the valley as well. We also do this series called Decolonizing Diets where we try and focus on an aspect of the food system that we'd really like people to think about and so we've done things around bees around colo around pesticides you know but our last one was our invasive species dinner and so we talked a little bit we really about well our food and we'll let Kasha tell you about the menu because she had so much to do with it. Let's see if I can remember. It was so the dinner was called Decolonizing Your Diet Eat Your Weeds and we really just created a menu pretty much exclusively based on weeds so we used even from the proteins were venison and feral pig we had a chiave flower roll we had several different mugwort jelly yeah yeah that's right we made a a mugwort jelly that went on the roll we had several different weed based salads including the gorilla ogle limo then our dessert was Honohono grass ice cream with a mugwort brownie amaranth hush puppies yeah it was really good but it and so we like to bring people you know there for good food for conversation and a really relaxed atmosphere but really raised some serious questions and issues about our food system and what can we do to be sustainable and what are the effects of colonization on our food system we have to discuss that and so a lot of times people can get defensive but if you can set up to a space that's safe that's nurturing that the food is feeding not just your physical body but your spirit and your mental you know realms then you can really have some good conversation and so yeah it makes for great conversations um i want to make sure we have time because i want to hear a little bit about the your guys's background so cut you how long have you been with with roots and kkh uh kkv yeah just like how did you get into about five and a half years and my background is i'm a dietician by trade but i've also um as from a cultural perspective have been a practitioner i've been a hula dancer and indigenous health has been my area of focus for about the past 25 years and i came to kkv through puny fratis or jackson who runs ho online and we have been friends and we actually were part of a hui of cultural practitioners trying to make sure that our cultural healing practices were alive and thriving and well and we especially you know besides food we do have um a birthing um a cultural birthing practices class and group that works together to promote all of those cultural practices and puny and i were friends we were working together and when this opportunity came up to work with food from a cultural healing perspective um that's when i came over to kkv and i'm very fortunate grateful for the opportunity seems like a great set kasha how about you um i've been with the roots program for just about two years now and um before that i've kind of done food systems work since i've been back in hui but i've also worked on both social justice and environmental justice efforts across the continent and then back here and um i think that this um work that we're doing right now really kind of marries um all of my interests in terms of um both working for change and trying to shift systems that are really not working for the majority of us but also at the same time that we're trying to shift those systems we're also building the alternatives and going ahead and doing that creative work as well so it's a nice blend of things and in my mind yeah kasha came in with a really strong social justice and making sure that you know we always are looking from that focus it's not you know we get so used to saying what's wrong in the world and we have to really if we need to fix something what are the alternatives and so we're happy that kasha came to join us and that we really have the opportunity to always look at that in our work and so it seems like you guys are are covering a lot of bases and addressing three different programs and events where do you see um what are some long-term goals that you haven't kind of reached yet or that you're still kind of looking to accomplish or take on for me we have all this healthy food we have all these things going on and we still see um food insecurity and food inequality in our valley and when until we can get to the point where everybody has first access everybody wants to eat the stories our our cultural practices and protocols and stories are still being passed down you know we once did an um uh um it's kind of like a Hawaiian emu but it's for that we did in the Chucky Chucky's fashion and there are um young adults in there that had never seen that being done and so it's like putting me in the middle of New York and telling me to build an emu and I have no resources and so how can we make sure those resources are available for all of our groups in our valley and that um they see food as a connection to hell yeah I think in addition to that I'm really um always kind of trying to work myself out of a job and that I would love to see right now we're being the connector and connecting local farmers with local communities but I'd love to just see that happening without us in five or ten years that there's really an established relationship between um local farmers who love to grow are able to um provide food to local communities and have their families be supported by that at the same time that local families are able to support themselves through those foods that they love and they are connected to the traditions and cultures um that sustain them so yeah I'm hoping that that keeps growing and keeps magnifying I mean you know for a health most physicians don't take a nutrition course at all you know they're taught to prescribe with medicine and so the thought of prescribing um you know you have this is what I'm going to prescribe you know eat these green vegetables and work in the Aina and do all of this kind of stuff until we get to that point we're missing a whole um diverse way of healing people if we think we're still you know in our medical system is one that sometimes they don't even get reimbursed unless they're prescribing a medicine every time the client visit we need to be prescribing all of these other things that physically and spiritually heal the body and so that's also what we work towards with our connection to food awesome great super great to feature you guys um can we for the last 30 seconds maybe just say how we can for us the community can come and help with what time the cafe is open can we go to that or work days on the farm so the cafe is open every Tuesday and Thursday from 11 to 1 lunchtime Tuesday and Thursdays we also have community work days where you can go up to the back of Kalihi and get dirty and help grow the food those happen every um Wednesday and Thursday morning and the big community work day happens every third Saturday and there's lots of volunteer opportunities at KKB so if you have a diverse interest you can work throughout our clinic and our community as a volunteer awesome all right that wraps up our time thank you guys so much for coming on and we'll come back next week thanks