 I'm Wendy Lo, and I'm your grateful friend as we journey to take your health back. We are coming to you live from downtown Honolulu, from the studios of Think Tech Hawaii, where 45 very diverse hosts take you on a journey into their worlds. I'd like to start today's show with wishing everyone a happy Thanksgiving. I personally feel that Thanksgiving should be celebrated every day. As long as you wake up, you should be grateful. Is that correct? If you're waking up, you have something to be grateful for. So today our topic of discussion will be on opening a healthy access to at-risk youth and bringing communities together. How do we prevent leaving people, especially our keiki, out of a society that has such abundance? Today's discussion is one and on. The idea that bounds made through sports can break down the barriers created by the economic class divide. What I would like you to take away from today's discussion is the idea that all kids deserve the best education and opportunities available to them, no matter their parents' income level. Today, we are very honored to welcome Jordan Conley, who I just met about a couple weeks ago, and I was so impressed with what his heart said and how he shares it with the keiki of Hawaii. He is the co-founder slash program designer of Hapa Mana. Welcome Jordan. Thank you, Wendy. You're welcome. So Jordan, tell us about what is Hapa Mana? Well, Hapa Mana is a non-profit athletic sports club. We bring free athletic, weekend athletic camps to Kamea Village. We also do after-school programs for IHS, Kamea Village, and Kaho Iki. Wow. So you're spread all over the place. I guess the need is great. The need is great. The need is great. And I look at it where you're pretty much focusing on the west side of the islands. Yes, ma'am. Last year, we had two camps at Waianae High School also. Oh, wow. And you know, my heart is the west side. I'm from Miley. I'm a Tidachik from Miley, so when I heard that that was your heart, I was so excited to join forces with you and see how we can work together because we have the same heart and I know that we can accomplish much together with yourself and your wife, Claire. So tell us about you. Just tell us some more about who you are. So I'm from Dayton, Ohio. I played sports all my life. I wrestled, played basketball, football, baseball, soccer, ran track. And so I've always just liked to play all sports. And then I came out here. I started playing volleyball, hiking and stuff and I just, I went, I did an after-school program a couple of years ago and just was doing sports and I had all these kids that... They needed you. They did. They didn't have... They needed you because you were doing it. You knew what it was all about. And so you wanted to give back, I'm sure. Exactly. Right? And you saw the desperate need that we have. And so that's a critical hour of the day when the keiki are done with school and now they don't go home. They're going to hang out. They're either going to get in trouble. A few of them will go and study in Study Hall or some of them will go to the Boys and Girls programs which we have a few of them on the islands. But your program is so key because you're focusing these students in the field and what they want to be doing, sports, right? So and when I look at you, I look at you, I think you're like a Hapa man. And you look Hawaiian Howley, right? But I know you're not, but I know you look Hapa. So how did Hapa Manas start? Okay, so like I said, I used to work with the after school program and it was at Dole Middle School. And so they only paid their after school people $10 an hour, which isn't very much, right? So when I started, they made a sign of contract that said that we would be there for the year because they said that the kids would be upset if somebody left the teacher they liked left during the year. So that actually happened. It wasn't me, but another teacher left. And when they told the kids, they all started crying and it really, it was really hard for them and stuff. The guy had got a job on the docks, which he said he just couldn't pass up because it was just the well paying job. So he would come back every now and then and he'd bring like McDonald's and stuff and sit with the kids and hang out with the kids and they really, really loved them and stuff. But when I saw that, like you said, it's the most important time for kids, right? As the time when they're out of school to when the parents get home, they need direction. They don't have nothing to do. That's when they can get in trouble. That's when kids get kidnapped and stuff like that's when the most bad stuff happens to kids. So my goal is to try to build a program where we can be with the kids at those hours, you know, and then the whole future goal is to be able to stipulate their coaches, maybe even make living wage jobs for when kids really need us to be around the most. Wow. So that's a big goal and it's going to take a lot of money and I know that I can already feel there's some fundraising opportunities that we're going to be discussing in the future. And I think that's why Keokua brought me to your site. So while we talk about that, that'd be another show, but why do you feel organizations such as Hapamana is so necessary in our society today? Like as we said, the after school part where kids really need us there, but also kids, well, where we go, the kids can't afford it. Like there's kids who can be on teams and whatnot, but like we go to low income and homeless areas where kids basically couldn't afford to afford our services at all. So we go, we give it to them free and we want to include all kids, all cakey, all people really in society. You know, we want to help just bring everybody together and those who don't have access, we want to try to help give them access, give them access. That's so key. I mean, and usually you put them together in sports camps. My daughters played volleyball and basketball. So they would have like different coaches from players from the mainland come in and do sports camps. And I thought that was so critical because it would motivate them and encourage them to get up to higher levels of playing. And so it has helped my daughters going to a sports camp. But so tell me, what exactly are your sports camps and what are they like? So at our sports camps, we do pretty much every sport I can find a coach for. We have a Taekwondo coach that comes to every camp. I coach basketball and football, do ladder drills, player does soccer. We also have volleyball coaches. We have, I already said Taekwondo. We have Kung Fu. We have different MMA. We also have a Kapa Weta club that comes out every now and then. And we have personal trainers from some of the top clubs all over Oahu. The Honolulu club, since personal trainers. One is from the Outrigger Waikiki. And so we have personal trainers do different things with the kids, you know, just different training stuff, strength and conditioning and all that. So we get that. And we also partner with Challenge Island Oahu or Challenge Island Oahu and Rise Above, which are educational groups. And they come out and Challenge Island does steam stuff. So they do like engineering stuff. And then Rise Above is our tutor and he spends Sundays tutoring the kids and just helping them with the grades up and all that. Wow, that's that's the most important. It's not just sports and play ball. Come on, guys. Let's shoot some hoops and all that. But you're giving them all the different aspects of success. And unfortunately, sometimes these kids don't have that from their mentors or their peers at home. So that's why I think this program is so key, so key. And just spending time with them, giving them that extra hug or a good job. And that's truly what they need because they're not sometimes getting that at home. And so you're you're right on track with that, giving them the quality that they need. And like you said, with more funding, you can bring in more coaches and maybe higher levels of coaches that you can bring these kids up to different levels to build up their self esteem and their self confidence so that they can excel in sports as well as excel in school academics, as well as just being a better person and a better friend. And I know a lot of this comes from you have life lessons that you teach your students. So I want you to share with us six life lessons that you teach through your your programs. So our life lessons we use on Hawaiian words. So Hapa, like Hapa-Mana, Hapa means mix or integrate in Hawaiian. And so we want our kids to get out of society and talk to people, mix in society, be an active member of society. Aloha Aina is love for the land. We want them to take care of the land. We want to start doing cleanups and such whenever as soon as we can. Ohana, Ohana means family. We want them Hapa-Mana to be like their second family and we want them to treat each other like family. Kaka is excellence. We want them to strive to be their best. Always work your hardest to the best you can. Hana is righteousness. You know, always do the right thing. Somebody needs help, help them out. And Onipata is steadfast. You know, perseverance, you know, you know, work hard and, you know. Just excel. Right. Don't give up. And just max out who K.O. Cool created them to be. And you know what I see right there is what you're doing is you're creating a community, you know, a community so that they don't have time to bully and pick on each other and make fun because they themselves are growing. And when they're growing, they don't have time for anything else except what you guys are teaching them. And those life lessons are so key. And maybe one day we can find you a sponsor that can make that into a card. They can always have it in their back pocket so that they can always resource that and say, oh, oh, yeah. Oh, Hanna member. And would you do that to a family member? You know, and just keep reminding them and then helping them to live Pono with each other. And you're creating this very safe community for them. And I think that's the best thing you can do for these students, not just giving them the abilities and the coaching skills or their sports, but your coach, your life coach, that's so key in this program that you're doing. You didn't even know that, huh? So, you know, what you're doing is a big commitment. You're working with not just one housing project, not with just one community you're working with the whole west side. And that's a massive community that really needs more and more programs. And I truly believe that church or faith base or, you know, community base or private base organizations like yourself need to just come along and just implement more and more of these programs because you set your ground rules and then you mandate it and then you fulfill it so you can run it the way you need to. And you know the needs of the students. So it makes so much sense. So the big commitment that requires so many partnerships and organizations, I know you mentioned a few like IHS, huge. I mean, Connie Mitchell from IHS. She's doing a fabulous job with all the different projects that she has going on throughout the state, not just the West Side. But I know her focus is a lot of programs there on the West Side. So I know that you partner a lot with her and you have her in your back pocket. So I know IHS and then could you share with us some of the other partners that you are working with? So Community Village Development Corporation, they're a nonprofit low income housing community. It used to be an old Dalmonte plantation. They would house the workers there. It goes around 2005-ish. They sold it to Community Village. I think they sold it to them for like ten dollars, but the agreement was to keep it affordable housing. Rides Above is a tutoring and test prep organization. They SAT and ACT test prep and they also tutor. They tutor most subjects and so they come to our camps on Sundays. And we're also trying to find a day where they can go to IHS for just trying to work out the logistics. That's a lot of different components. And do you have staff or is it just you and Claire or how is this run? Me and Claire run it pretty much. We have volunteers that tell us what they can do and we send them where we want them to go kind of or where places would like them to go. But when it comes to the computer work, the back office work is just me and Claire. Well, I mean, anyway, I mean, that's how I work most effectively is when I just depend on me and like you have your wife, Claire, so you can depend on each other and the work it's done. And it's not like you didn't do it, you know, and pass the bug because you have to hold each other accountable. So I like that aspect, but soon enough with more and more programs growing and when the word gets out more because there are so many kids that don't even know about your programs and that you would be able to, you know, come alongside them and invite them to this community that you're creating. I think it's so, so key. So I know that you don't just focus on sports. I know you have all I mean, like mental and emotional coaching as well as nutritional coaching. And I know that that's a key part in your programs as well is teaching them about good nutrition. What do you do about that part? Well, so we also we're not partnered with, but we work with Hawaii Pacific Health and a lot of their staff will come and volunteer. So when they're here, we have them speak about nutrition and what not about the different food on the plates. So when we feed them lunch every camp, so we give them a free lunch and we give them carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes, sometimes peppers. Then we buy chips and sandwiches for them, but they're not allowed to have chips unless they get the vegetable. Oh, good, good. And then we sit down with them and they ask us about the different stuff on the plate. And so we talk about it. I'm not necessarily a nutritionist, but we do talk about, you know, eating right, eating healthy. And a couple of times they brought in a bag of chips to the gym and I tell them that they can't bring in a bag of chips and that they got to leave them out. And one of the moms actually gave it back to the mom and she's like, I like you. Yes, yes, you're going to be their best friends because it's not the mom and the dad saying, don't need it. It's the coach. And you have a lot of authority in these young men's and women's lives to use it. And at any time you need us to come in and back you up with any kind of nutritional bits, as well as I represent the American Diabetes Association. I'm a board of directors for the last 10 years. And if you need any of our directors to come in and speak to your students, we'd be loving to do that because we've got to catch them young. We've got to catch them young. And then if they develop better eating habits, they're going to be healthier adults. And that's what we firmly believe. We would love that. We take anybody and any skill they have. We want to give it to our kids. I tell somebody if they like to cook and they want to teach our kids to cook, that's good. Like any skill that you have that you feel like you want to teach somebody else, we'll take that. Sign me up. Right now, Jordan, we will take a one minute break. So we're going to take a break and give you a drink of water and take some time to rethink of what next you want to share with the audience. But we'll be back in 60 seconds. Mahalo. Hi, I'm Rusty Kamori, host of Beyond the Lines. I was the head coach for the Punahou Boys varsity tennis team for 22 years. And we're fortunate to win 22 consecutive state championship. This show is based on my book, which is also titled Beyond the Lines. And it's about leadership, creating a superior culture of excellence, achieving and sustaining success, and finding greatness. If you're a student, parent, sports or business person, and want to improve your life and the lives of people around you, tune in and join me on Mondays at 11 AM as we go Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. Aloha. Hi, guys. I'm your host, Lillian Cumick, from Lillian's Vegan World. I come to you live every second Friday from 3 PM. And this is the show where I talk about the plant-based lifestyle and veganism. So we go through recipes, some upcoming events, information about health, regarding your health, and just some ideas on how you can have a better lifestyle, eat healthier, and have fun at the same time. So do join me. I look forward to seeing you. And Aloha. Aloha, and welcome back to Think Tech Hawaii's Take Your Health Back with Wendy. Today, I'm so honored to have Jordan Conley, who runs and operates with his wife, this amazing program that helps not just the kids of the West Side, but if you want to drive on over to any of the locations that he has programs going on, your kids are always welcome. And I am going to ask Jordan one question. You work a lot with the kids. Are the parents allowed to stay to watch? Yes, ma'am. A lot of times, the parents will stay and actually volunteer. So if there's a parent that has an athletic school, they can help coach that athletic school, or if they just want to help clean up or carol the kids, whatever the parent wants to do, they can welcome to stay and help. Or if they just want to sit and watch, that's fine too. We've got chairs and seating around. They can sit down, just hang out, and watch your kids play. That's one sign of success. You're open to many different scenarios. And I like that. I mean, I just met Jordan and Claire about two weeks ago. And I really, really loved your heart and your message about your organization, Hapa Mana, and what it's doing for the community, especially the West Side. But the fact that you are so open and saying, yeah, I want to share this message with people. I want to encourage more Kiki to come out. And then you even open your programs up to the adults. That, to me, is a true sign of success. Because when your kids' parents are there, they're going to perform even better because now mom and dad are watching. And then when the parents are there, they get a vested interest in there. And now, if I come and hang out at your camp, my goal would be to make those parents build a community with the parents and get their support. Because once you get them to buy in and work with you, I tell you the success of your program, because they're so grateful that you're putting in your time to guide their children. Money cannot buy that. That's another one of our long-term goals is we want to start teams that play all over the island. And we want to get kids from different parts of the island on the same team. And that way, we have parents from different parts of the island that go to the same practices in the same games. They have kids on the same team. They could build the bonds that team sports create. And then we can take that over the divide that class creates. Class divide creates. Right. Well, see, a lot of programs. I mean, it's just going to continue to grow. I know you don't sleep a lot because I was texting you and you saying, I'm going to be up at 3 and I texted you at 4 or 4 or 5 or whatever. 4 or 4 this morning. Yeah, you said, I'm up now. I'm like, OK, but give me 30 minutes. I got to drive to my kiki. So I mean, I went to bed like that too, and I was up at 4.30. So I'm like, yes. So I said, I met my male match, you know? His love and his passion for the community. And then he not just talks about it. He walks the talk and he puts it into action and making a lot of differences in many of the kiki's lives. And the best part, as well, you're going to make differences in the families as you build this community. So I was sharing with you earlier how blessed you are, because as an organization that you are, you already have an address that you claim as home. So this address happens to be in Cunia, right? And so tell me about your camps and how you acquired it. So we started in 2016, September 2016. So we're just over three years old. The first year we tried to get our name out and tried to find places to do camps, very hard, expensive to rent out a lot of places. And just a lot of places, if you haven't done something, just say no. And be like, we don't know who you are, whatever. So last year, I got a connection with Wai'anae High School, and Kiko, their athletic director, he let us come and he gave us their gym and football field. We threw two camps there. And so we actually had to drive our stuff out there, a whole bunch of stuff. So this is Cunia Village right here. This is our gym that we have now. Oh, look at that setting. This is 92-1770 Cunia Road, and that would be the address. So last year when we were taking it, so there we can leave all our stuff there. We have probably 20 basketballs, 10 footballs. Oh, because that's home, right? Yeah, that's home. So we leave all our stuff there. We got two big old cage type deal things where we put all our balls. We got kick pads for Taekwondo. We got two of the big water jugs to give the kids water and all that. So it makes it a lot easier to have that place. Yeah, so we had to drive it all out to Waianae last year and bring it home and then drive it back. And so, again, we had to bring it home. We kept all that stuff in our little Hawaii place. So we don't, there's not a lot of room out here. So half our house was filled with sports gear. Now we got a kind of open house, not all the way. You're blessed, and as you bless others, you're going to get more blessings. Trust me, it happens this way. So keep doing good as you are. And I tell you, the doors will open. And when more people know and learn more about your heart, they will, and they'll come. Yeah, and so partner like with you is doing with the different organizations. And they too can help you as far as, you know, a lot of these groups are, even like the Rotarians, the Lions groups, they fundraise. And once you get to know, they get to know your programs, you may be on their list to say, you know what, this year we're going to fundraise for you to help you implement more, you know, staff or more food, you know, better quality of food for the kids, whatever your needs are, write it out, put it out there and your prayers shall be answered. Trust me, I know it works, okay? So I know you work with all different populations, right? Not just the West Side, because if I lived in, if I lived in town and I needed to get out and take my kids out to Cunea, because I knew that you had a great reputation of working with the kids with great results, I, the parent would probably want to drive my kids out to Cunea. Is that correct? Yes, you can come out to Cunea. We, all kids are welcome, all kids are free. We do focus on low income and homeless populations, but we, like I said, we want to help integrate everybody, so we don't want to just focus on those populations, we want to bring kids from like Punejo and Iolani to our camps so that those kids can meet our kids and they can all become friends. They grow up and become, and stay friends and then, you know, not about what, you know, it's about who you know, you know, you got the right connections. And we want to give all the kids the right connections and just, you know, spread the love. Wow, that's another very key component, because you're not just staying here and keeping them here, you're integrating because we all bleed the same. Right. And so most of our volunteers come from the East Side too, so like I said, we've got the personal change from the clubs, but like our tennis coaches from the East Side, Hawaii, Kaili, so we try to bring the island to the West and eventually we want to try to bring the West to the East because we want to try to start moving our camps a little bit, like using Palama Settlement, using maybe the Honolulu Club, the Oahu Club, doing different events at different clubs and taking our kids places they probably wouldn't otherwise go. Very good. So how does one register to get into your program? Go to hopamana.org and there's a, I think it's on the contact page, but there's a page there to just register and you register online. It's free, it takes probably a couple minutes and good to go. Very good. So you mentioned that Hopamana is about three years old. Where do you basically get your funding and your support at this moment? Right now we have a reoccurring, one reoccurring grant and then we have just a community of donations. I work at the Peppelina Hospital so I know a lot of doctors and stuff like that so I get decent donations. In the three years, I think we brought in a close to $25,000 fish. Wow, very good. And so where is Hopamana headed for in the future? Share with us your future plans. Like from here, you came three years and that's a very big step thus far and now I know you have more grand plans in the making. We do. We would like to, well, right now we have our camps solidified. We maybe like to get another spot like maybe an IHS or Kahauiki village to host another camp. As I said, if we get more funding, we would like to travel our kids to different camps. And the main goal is we would like to start an after-school program where we could, like I said, have living wage jobs or kind of wrote out a program where it would be 27 jobs. It would work over five schools. We would do after-school programs that say like Y and I, Nanakuli, IHS, Kahauiki and I would be like our five say. And then we would take the 20, so there'd be 25 coaches, five at each school and then two overseas or whatever you call it. And then they would be at the five schools and they'd just rotate every week or so or maybe every month. We would try to work that out but all the schools would get all the coaches and all the different programs and then it would be like two athletic programs and two like educational programs like coding, STEM, art, something like that. Wow. So, Jordan, at the end of the day, ultimately what does Hapa Mana want its kids to gain from what you're investing into them? Well, we wanna create just what you call like upstanding citizens in the world. We want them to be productive citizens. So we go five successful traits of a successful person, vision, strategy, persistence, learning and belief. So we try to instill all those through sports and other things like vision, just seeing what you wanna do later on, seeing the future strategy, just working it out using your coaches, using your mentors to help you build a strategy, persistence, it's a big thing in sports. We're working pretty hard. They wanna quit sometimes and keep going, keep going, all that type of stuff. So we try to relate sports to real life but we also try to bring in real life mentors to talk to them more about than just sports. Wow. So there are a lot of great people in Hawaii, in our environment, our community here that can offer their services to exactly what you need. So when we finish this show, let me talk to you about who you can invite that they would be very honored to be helping you with your programs. And out there as well, if you have these skills, mentorship, inspirational, they need you. They need you. And so not just that we, they need money and they need items and supplies, they need bodies, they need people like us to go in to teach them about diabetes, about nutrition and then, yeah, mentorship. And any business leaders out there as well, I'm asking you, come in and have a mentorship program that these kids can look up to you and follow in your footsteps and achieve such success as many of you have here in Hawaii. And that's why we are such a great state because we're such a giving state. And I know there's so many people out there that say, I have a weekend free or you know what, one weekend a month, I can do that, Jordan, just slot me in for this time. And then they'll be calling you because they wanna help you and they just wanna be there for you. So Habamana has accomplished so much in three years time. I'm just surprised that I didn't know as much as what I've been learning now, but I will come in, that I will volunteer and help as much as I can in any which way. And I'm publicly stating that. So you're holding me to that, I know. And I know we are gonna kick off with some great projects coming up. So how will people get in touch with you? So go to Habamana.org and you have a volunteer section on there, you can volunteer there. You could also call 808-492-2213, that is actually my direct phone number, it's the number for Habamana, but it's also my direct phone number, I'll be the one answering the phone. Right, so recognize that voice guys because he's a dude, okay? And he's kinda tall, okay? So he's kinda like, you better answer the call if he calls you for help and you're offering help, say I'll do it and just go for it guys because they need you. Hawaii needs you, our Kiki needs you. So at this time I wanna say mahalo to you, Jordan for joining us here today on Think Tech of A'I. We're very, very grateful to you and to Claire and for all that you do with our Kiki and making a difference in their lives, mahalo. Thank you.