 Okay, we're back, we're Think Tech Hawaii, I'm Jay Fidel. This is Community Matters on a given Thursday. On a Thursday when the stock market went down 1200 points. Which sort of helps us understand and define our times. So today we have a non-profit and this is non-profits mean business too actually. And the non-profit is KYDO and David Tautofi is here. He runs that organization and it sounds really good. We need to learn about it. David, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me on Jay. How'd you get involved in KYDO? It sounds like a bit of a story and I wonder if you could tell us. It was just a group of people from Kamiki High School. When I moved here from the mainland Las Vegas in 2015, we just wanted to find a way to be able to impact our kids, the youth and the community. Bringing resources to them that would allow us to do some of the things that we knew were important for these kids. And so it was established back in 2015 and everything they were able to do is contributes to the full development of a youth or a child. Yes, interesting. Just before the show started, we talked about how it takes a community to raise a kid. And there was a time maybe not too long ago, maybe when you attended Kamiki High School, when the community was raising the kid. But it's not like that anymore, not in the community, not in high school. Can you talk about the change that you've seen from A to B? The culture has changed and that goes throughout the nation from just the way that our families and communities are being raised. There was a time when I was in high school where you had a generation of kids having kids. And so we're now in that generation where those kids that were having kids at that time are now the grandparents of those kids who are having kids that had kids when they were younger. So there's a lot of things that really play into an effect of how they parent and different beliefs that play into that. But as society moves, so does the way of life. And one of the biggest things that really has had an impact on life in general throughout the nation, probably the world as well, has been technology. And one of those things we know is right in front of us every single day are like our telephones and the internet for sure. As much of a blessing as that is and can be, it's also been a challenge. And many aspects, it's sort of robbed a lot of our youth in their social development and understanding how to cope and to trust relationships and trust people. And so that's what we're trying to fit in and help equip these young people to understand that they have control of their life. And one day they're gonna be sitting in our seats, and making a big difference. And we're seeing a lot of issues as we see it today in our government and our leadership. And however way we wanted to take a stand on that, it comes down to our future. And these kids, like people said when I was younger, we were the future. These kids are our future as well. Yeah, somehow the burdens on them are greater, don't you think, as we go forward? Absolutely. We may not be leaving them, a world as good as was left to us, actually. So you were in Las Vegas, working in Las Vegas, and you came back. You came back to do good things in Hawaii, do good deeds, good work. And in an altruistic way to benefit the community, can you tell me what motivated you and what motivates you to spend your time in a voluntary nonprofit organization like KYDO? You know, I'm a man of faith. And as you know, it takes a special kind of person. I'm not saying I'm much special, but it takes a special kind of person to really take on things like this, knowing that we could all just be focusing our own lives. But I came here a few years ago just to visit, and I saw some of the, just the place where our community was in Polo Valley from the housing, and also the situation with the Kamiki High School, and just the rumors of Kamiki High School shutting down, and all of that. But the thing that stunned me the most was seeing on New Year's Eve when I went up to Polo Housing to see some family members. I saw just a ton of kids and families, normally that's just how it is. New Year's Eve, everybody's partying. But to see that these kids were middle school days, kids having beer cans in their hands and smoking with parents and family members, adults, I'm not gonna say they're parents, but adults around being okay with it, that really stunned me. And that really gave me a good picture of where things are today. And it wasn't till I left that I realized, man, okay, I gotta get back to Vegas, gotta get back into the swing of things, I'll be okay, I'll get rid of it, I'll shake it off. And it didn't shake off, it stuck on me, and it grew bigger, and that's where I prayed and fasted about it, and four months later I made a decision to come back and found myself back in July of 2015. Good for you, David, that's great to hear. It's thoughtful, it's kind, it's all the right things. So you have these kids and you become a part, maybe a significant part of the community that needs to raise them and help them and give them structure. And so the big question to me is how do you do that? It's not easy, especially in these difficult times when there are so many forces and vectors and influences that undermine that structure, but you're devoted to giving them the structure. What is the structure you're giving them? You know, a lot of it is like what we talked about before we started this conversation, goes back to old school, you know, goes back to our original DNA, and being a football coach at Kameke High School, you know, it's one of the biggest keys to our success at Kameke High School. With our football program the last five years has been the basic fundamentals. And so for this, there's no real answer to it, but a need for effort and an effort on a bigger scale than just an individual. And so it's just basic fundamentals of life, investing in our kids as families and having a village, an actual village, looking out for our kids. And like you said, there's so many things that are pulling and taken away from, you know, the way that we develop our youth, and we develop as people today that it's made a lot more challenging, undermining a lot of what's been important in developing character. Yeah, and I was telling you as I walked in that the stock market is down 1200 points, and that's three days running. It's down probably about 3000 points, you know, just within the last few days. And what that means ultimately is there will be, there will be economic, you know, consequences in Hawaii and maybe the whole world, which means that young kids won't have your kids. Your teenage kids will not have the opportunities that we might have expected. They will be graduating into a world of recession, very likely, and this is gonna affect our lives and their lives and their opportunities. So what I see is you have the opportunity to build resilience into them, to show them not only the things that have customarily undermined their future, but now the things that will maybe even more profoundly undermine their future. We have to make them resilient to those things. And so I go back to, so it's a football thing or it's a sports thing. It sounds like to me, you'd be a great coach. You'd be a great life coach. You get involved personally. Do you have your volunteers get involved personally and what do they do? Yeah, so we, you know, it's, first I've been a football coach. That's been a platform to be able to reach out to the community and to also have a hand in with the kids. So it's not technically just sports, but sports is a pillar. It's one of the pillars that makes Kamiki Youth Development Organization what it is from family, community, education, and athletics. And within those four pillars, we're able to put together projects and get our kids involved within the community and the community involved with our kids as well. So these are projects that we put together to that allow us to be able to work with these kids. We had a big project that happened just a couple of weeks ago. A community service project. It was just a simple cleanup at Palo Alto Park. But the purpose of this was to bring out the community and to get our kids out of their comfort zone. Associating with people they normally wouldn't associate with just breaking that stigma that they had in their minds as well as people from outside breaking that stigma about our kids. When you look at the kids, there's enough to pass judgment, but it was a success and those are opportunities for them to break those barriers that has caused that division in their minds and to grow in terms of building relationships and having more faith in humanity as young kids. We had over 300 people on that project and that was a huge success. But we do a lot of other things and it's based off of the experience and like you said, where our society is going today, these kids are not gonna be able to do or go into the things that we were able to go into, but building resiliency in these kids is really gonna be based off of the experience that would change the way they think, their perspective because they will still have a choice. No matter where in life they go, they're still gonna be affected by choice and the choice is gonna be ultimately the key to their success. So you build them one kid at a time, right? In other words, you David, you're gonna talk to these kids. You're gonna share your thoughts with them. You're gonna try to encourage them and give them direction. How does that work? Do you take them for walks? What do you do? Oh, you know, these projects, these projects are always what it is and monthly I hold a dinner on campus where I get a lot of our boys to invite as many of the problem boys on campus to come out to dinner. It's free dinner and we usually have guest speakers that come in just to talk and share about their story, their life, inspiring these kids. That's one way and then partnering with businesses and organizations to make some of these projects happen. Like a project that we did, taking a bunch of kids to Las Vegas, camps in the summer, leadership camps and projects of the sort, just to give these kids an opportunity to experience something other than just a classroom type of talk, so. Yeah, you mentioned also, and I've seen in your materials that you don't limit yourself to Kaimuki, that you're also working in other areas of the school at the larger Kaimuki area, including Palo Alto. How do you determine the people you deal with? How do you determine the full extent of your operation? You know, it's just determined on the need, you know, the full extent of the operation. I mean, Kaimuki is one big community and it was based out of Kaimuki High School. Kaimuki High School is the community school of our community and for the most part, when you look at the health of your high school system, it gives you an indication of the health of your community and right now there's a lot of issues and obstacles and challenges that the high school that we're facing today and it's not gotten any better, it's getting worse, to be honest. And so that helps us to see that, well, there's a bigger issue that's happening in community. And for us to be able to like really pinpoint what's going on in the community, it takes a certain amount of people, volunteers like myself and several other people that go out of their way to invest in these kids to volunteer their time and spend time with some of these kids. And a lot of these guys are coaches, a lot of these people are teachers and a lot of these people are community leaders that have kids of their own. And when you have kids of your own, it makes it a lot easier to understand and to kind of grab a grip of what's going on. So what are the challenges? I mean, you're talking about real problems, social problems, maybe there's, I mean, I would guess there's drug problems involved, there's broken households involved, there's crime, there's violence, who knows what? I mean, I'm really asking, not stating, but I'm wondering how you deal with those challenges with a given kid or a community of kids? Because sometimes, if you don't stand in their way and say, no, you can't do that, they will do it. How do you handle that? Well, you handle it with the kids that are right in front of you. A lot of the crime rates in Kameke, just in the community itself, has been probably one of the highest in the state. We have a huge population of Micronesians and I think there's a reputation that they have that's really had an effect on the community. I mean, the statistics are pretty crazy, but I think it's really low on the low end as far as broken homes, but probably more than 75% of those kids come from broken homes. And they come with a different culture, especially the Micronesians, when they're coming in from a new, to a new culture like the United States and our way of life, it's different. And so our system and our government doesn't make it easy for parents to adjust. We have programs, but yet it's like having to go through a minefield for these parents to learn how to catch the bus, learn how to get downtown, learn how to read things to get to where they need to be. And a lot of them don't have people to hold their hands and to help them to get there. So a lot of them end up just giving up and just living off of government assistance while the kids are suffering in different areas, learning off of social media. And kids in high school, especially in middle school, are probably the most influenced group of people that in today's society, and they're learning from different avenues, like movies and social media, especially. And so I mean, drugs, crime rates have always been an issue, but even more so, drugs have skyrocketed just because of the safety that they feel in school. So a lot of these kids are selling dine bags for 100 bucks, they get 50 bucks for that. And so in their eyes, it's like, that's a lot of money. The monopo truck, you can get a lot of food for $5, the monopo truck in the housing. And so we're settling for a lot less and it's not really helping them to understand that there's a lot more for them to go after and that this is not the life that they want to live in their future. What about DOE? I mean, you mentioned a little while ago that a chemical high was in danger of being, quote, shut down. I'm not sure what that means. I'd like you to tell me what that means, but I'd like you to tell me what DOE can do and what it is doing and how it is coping with these things from the quality, the departmental level, the governmental level and what it needs to do, what you would suggest and how you collaborate with DOE to the extent that you have a cooperative arrangement. There's a lot that the viewer could do. The chemical high school is probably the most at risk school in the state, just given we're at, going into the school year this year, the enrollment as of August was about 678, 73 around there, but the statistics don't really tell the story. Those numbers, there's over 70% of that number there consists of chronic absentees and dropouts. And technically we're having less than 300 kids walking on that campus. And so when I went to school at Kamikia School, we had about 1,800 kids and it's always been in that number. And the system itself, every kid is about $6,500 a kid to enroll. And so when the No Child Left Behind Act was passed, it allowed kids to be able to GE out. And so the reputation of the school has plummeted since in the last 20 years, it's plummeted and the leadership has been questionable in the school. And so that plays into why people wouldn't want to bring their kids in. We have well over 650 GEs that are supposed to be in Kamikia that have GE out this year alone. And so that just shows, that's just the result of some of the issues that are happening in, but it all starts from the top. It starts from the leadership, it starts from the plan. The expectations that are put on a school like Kamikia given the challenges they have are the same expectations put on schools like Kapolei, Campbell High School, Kaiser High School, all these schools that, they're pretty well off, they're strong factors in their communities. Yet Kamikia is the little guy that still has to meet the same expectations with not enough resources. And so what happens is these kids go out to schools, they enroll, the schools get the money that they get to be able to provide the resources to those schools. And a lot of these kids end up leaving those schools whether they get expelled or whatever it is. And they come back to Kamikia. When they come back to Kamikia, there's no resources for them. We're having to take them on and that stretches the resources even more. And so there's a lot of things that really have hurt the school and the community. The cafeteria has to make about 350 plate lunches a day. They barely sell 120, if that. The prices are still the same that to get a first lunch and a second lunch. A lot of our kids can't really afford it. And one of the issues is some of these kids don't even fill out for government assistance for free and reduced lunch. But a lot of the issues there has just been the parents not having an opportunity to understand what they're signing or even understand what they're reading. So they end up not doing anything about it. And here we are with our kids at school. And we know, Jay, nutrition is a big factor in the way our kids learn. So these kids are coming in and eating cookies and all of the chips and everything you can think of because that's the cheapest thing to buy. It goes to the larger question of what is happening at home. To start, we talked about the structure in their lives and maybe they're not getting structure at home. Maybe they're not learning about how to deal with the community at home, which leaves kind of a vacuum of void in their training, their perception of their role in the community. And so I'm reminded of a movie we once made about Keala Kea High School in Upper Kona there, Kona Malka, Big High School. And the principal, to his credit, understood that you had to deal with the parents and the homes from which these kids came. There were a lot of Pacific Islander kids in the school and there was a lot of racial strife in this school to the point where it had to get closed down once in a while. So what he did was he included the parents in programs where they would teach the whole family how to go shopping, how to deal with the modern world, how to deal with all the requirements put on people to engage with government, engage with business and so forth. And it was really a great thing because now both the parents and the kids at the same time would understand these things. And I wonder if this is something that could be or is in your portfolio right now. Absolutely. We couldn't do it on our end without the parents and even as a football coach in our system, open door communication with the parents and having our parents to be able to have just as much of an impact on our kids as we do in our kids. But coming from the area that a lot of our kids come from, our parents, they come from broken homes. So there's just a huge difference when they have to choose which parent they're gonna go through throughout the week and then a lot of these parents are working three, four jobs not before it used to be one, two, now it's three and four jobs that they're trying to work. And so a lot of things are being, there's just a lot of time that flies by where these kids don't have them around. And when they have them, it's just too busy. It's just the parents are too busy doing something else. But we always, in our projects that we put together, it's always the parents that we're depending on the most help with. Yeah, it's serious in the sense that that each generation relies on the next generation to take us to a better place. Each generation, so we couldn't do this, but maybe you can, why don't you make a better world? And if we don't do that, then what happens instead of those kids making a better world, they make a world in which the senior generation has more trouble. And that could, maybe it is happening in Hawaii. It sounds like there's a problem in chemical high school for sure. But what I wanted to ask you, and that we only have a few minutes left to go to the name of our series, which is nonprofits do business too. And you have a business situation here. You have to be sustainable. Even if you have a whole bunch of volunteers that work free, you still have to provide the platform, provide the events, you need some money. You need some support from government, from business, what have you. In order to stay alive and in order for the volunteers to come back again and again and help you. So this is complicated, especially in an organization where you could be discouraged, David, I hate to tell you that, this could be discouraging and I admire you for not being discouraged. So Query, how does the business of KYDO take place? How do you stay in business? Well, you know, you're absolutely right. I mean, this is not for the faint of heart. I've had battles, you know, just within myself having to make decisions for my family as well. But for us to be able to sustain businesses, it's all, it's been about relationships and having the right relationships with people and the government and businesses that allow us that believe in what we do and that allow us to do what we do. And we've learned a lot as we've grown in the last five years. And so we're moving into different parts of our organization. Now where grants are now gonna be the next thing in line for us to be able to sustain what we need to sustain doing what we do. But relationships with companies and businesses have been the biggest part of our success or even the biggest part of our lives as an organization. And when I first came on board to start this organization, I just wanted to be a bridge between the business world and the communities and to help our businesses on our, in our islands, take care of our people as our lives carry on. So. Yeah, well, how do you deal with them? Do you, I mean, how do you raise your money? You have to have some funding. Yes. With volunteers around. We know that here at Think Tech. And so how do you raise your money? Do you go, you know, do you have fund drives? Do you have certain underwriters who supply you with the funds you need to operate? So how we raise money is simple. I mean, it's unique. It's not easy either. But the projects that we put together, the projects that I put down on paper are usually our business plans. And so these projects require a certain amount of funds to be able to happen and to execute. And so the funds that we do get coming in are mainly to help with these projects, specific projects. So when people are donating, they know that their money or their monies are going specifically for a project. And, you know, until we can get to a point where, you know, we would make a living doing this, that's where it's going to be. And, you know, ultimately that's what it was meant to be for, to help service our kids. So if, if, if, if I as a business person or if I as an individual wanted to help either by volunteering and spending some time with these kids in this organization and your various events and connections, if I wanted to give you some money or connect you or help you, for example, get connected with, say, government programs that could give you money, how do I reach you? And what are the opportunities for me? Because, you know, I may want to have the same kind of psychic benefit that you have. I want to help. I may recognize the difficulties in this generation and I may want to, you know, for the benefit of all of us for the community, I may want to actually spend some time and money and resources to help you. How do I do that? Where do I go? So, you know, we're, we're a basic, just an email to karmicayouthdevelopmentatgmail.com just reaching out. It's, we're not, we're not that big of an organization to where your emails will fall by the wayside. We'll get to see everything that comes in and it just takes an effort to communicate that way and then, you know, and get some more time to spend to talk and to know, know other people that want to participate because people that do want to give in, I definitely, my goal is for them to also feel like they've had just as much of an impact on these, on a project or these kids as myself and our volunteers, even if they can't be there. And so, you know, this is our INA and we want to, we want to make sure that, you know, every penny that comes is put to the best use that will return for them to bless them. So. Bless them and bless you, David. Bless you. David Tautofi. Kaimuki Youth Development Organization, you're doing good work and we should all appreciate you and thank you. Thank you, Jay. Thank you for having me. Do what we can. Thank you, David. Aloha. Thank you.