 Welcome back to Think Tech. Here we are and we're doing Hawaii food and farmer remote. We're doing it with the John A. Burns School of Medicine in downtown Kakaako and I'm here I'm Jay Fidel back in the control central here in downtown Honolulu. And so we have our hosts are on location and they are as you can see Justina Spiritu and Matthew Johnson our regular hosts of Hawaii food and farmer and they have a special guest with them is Erin O'Keeffe. She's an ORIs I guess O-R-I-S-C fellow with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and we're delighted and happy to see her here. Let me explain that in 2015 HCDA the Hawaii Community Development Association and Oahu Fresh submitted an application for technical assistance from the Federal Local Foods Local Places Initiative Honolulu is one of 27 communities selected to develop a food system action plan and then planning workshops on local foods and community livability are taking place this very week here in Kakaako like today and in this particular episode Justine and Matt will talk with an EP representative namely Erin O'Keeffe and see what's going on the EP representative is EP is leading these workshops so we get background on the collaborative federal program I'm going to hear how the EPA and the planners see local food as a catalyst for smart growth for community engagement and revitalization and we are so excited to be doing this remote okay Justine and Matt take it over from here. Aloha thank you Jay for being flexible and creative with us as Jay mentioned we're here kind of holding these workshops right now this is a process that has been coming for a while with the application we put in a little bit of the impetus impetus for the the grant is recognizing kind of the energy and activity that is currently going on in Honolulu involving around local food whether it's from a food security perspective or community kind of engagements bringing community together kind of force we see a lot of opportunity a lot of things going on and when we heard about this grant it seemed like a good opportunity to bring in some expertise of folks that have seen communities kind of rally around food projects and go from idea to implementation and it seems like a good resource to kind of build the capacity for what's going on here in Honolulu so as you mentioned we have Erin here she's going to give us a little bit of background on the program and kind of the EPA stance on it and we're also going to get to hear her background and her kind of interests in these kind of projects and her position at EPA to get a little bit of background so I can hardly turn my head but thanks for joining us Erin. Yeah thank you for having me Aloha everyone so I'm Erin O'Keefe I'm an ORISE fellow at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Sustainable Communities here from Washington DC so the EPA's mission in general is to protect human health in the environment and in the Office of Sustainable Communities we are in office in the Office of Policy within the API so not a regulatory office and we do our work in a variety of ways on local state and federal levels so on the local level it's with technical systems programs like local food local places really being on the ground where land use decisions are made and then from the federal side it is working to collaborate among federal agencies to make sure that your coordinator efforts are not working in silos to make them more effective in the way that we help communities so the reason that we work on local physical places in our office is because we believe where and how we build our communities has impacts on human health and our layer land, air, and water. Sorry I can't find this thing. But so I'm an ORISE fellow in office and EPA is one of several funding partners for the local food local places program we work with the United States Department of Agriculture Department of Transportation the Centers for Disease Protection or control and prevention and then in the local areas we work with the Appalachian Regional Commission and the Delta Regional Authority as well and we're all working on this because we believe that the issue of local food and creating healthy walkable communities relates to all of our missions in all those agencies so another reason that we're working on it is because we've heard from communities across the country like Honolulu that they want assistance in having the conversation of how to use local food as a tool for economic development and as a means to create those healthy walkable communities. So this year is the second round of the program we're working in 27 communities including Honolulu which is a huge deal because we had 340 applicants this year so to be one of 27 out of 340 just goes to show all the great work that's already being done here in Honolulu and just seeing Matt and some others like Daniel took us around and Hunter and some others took us around the community yesterday and we got to see some of the great work going on here which is just really really inspiring so right now I'm just going to show you guys about it. Well, I'm here now. You want to go? Oh yeah, okay I was going to say, we're really close right now and that's a great background on the program. Can you talk a little bit about like local food, local places specific and kind of tying it into maybe some specific example of maybe projects from last year that you've seen or even this year just so if someone's quite familiar with the program what are some examples of things that may come out of this? Sure, so like a tangible example would be we actually have a short video on our web page that shows one of the things that we worked in and some of the progress that they've made so I can talk about them a little bit to give kind of a more tangible example of what this looks like at the end. So we worked in Corbin, Kentucky actually in the pilot phase of this program so it was about a little over two years ago I think but so Corbin, Kentucky is a small economically distressed area in Kentucky and they had a vacant lot on your main street so they were able to start a farm market on that vacant lot and they also kind of used it as an incubator sort of so there were artisans as well as local food sold at the market and it was able to help them create kind of a network so Andy Sammons was our main contact there and he helped run the market and he also opened a coffee shop downtown so when vendors felt like they were out growing or doing really well at the market they were able to move into his coffee shop and have a small corner of the shop and sell there. So what kind of product was that for you? They were selling pottery and jewelry and so they started selling in his shop and continued to do well and he let them use the upstairs I think for space to bring your product and then Andy was able to help them find a vacant building on their main street to eventually move into and start their own brick and mortar store so that just kind of shows the progression of the economic development and also revitalizing their main street. And can you kind of explain what the status of that project was when they applied and maybe why you selected and then what was the specific assistance or how did the workshops or the participation then like take them to the next step from where their project was when they applied. Sure so when they applied I think they were really you know like a huge vacancy rate downtown I can't remember the exact number I don't want to tell you the wrong one but now they're down to about 5% vacancy rate because having that farmers market on their main street was able to bring some new people to the area so then all the shops and a lot of people were like oh I want to have a store on the main street there's some people coming here now like it's a really great place to be so that was the connection there but when they applied I wasn't in with the office at the beginning of that but from what I understand it really vacant main street the coffee shop that are printed contact open with one of the things there and it was just some vacant lots and it wasn't really that great to be so they had workshop brought together one of the great things I think about the workshop is the ability to bring together so many different people that are working not necessarily on the same issues but on similar issues that wouldn't otherwise have the opportunity to talk to the others about what they're doing to collaborate so I think that is a real power to help everybody putting that work and bring together a tangible idea and say oh like I didn't know that you were doing this I'm doing it now so you know I can actually with so-and-so or I would get help and push forward that's kind of what we were seeing just last night here yeah where we're having kind of a good discussion a good discussion where people were just kind of getting this whole event kicked off and yeah the same thing happened with someone's like oh you know we really need this this would be great to have and then someone else would say I'm like well actually we're already working on something like this so just that in itself you think you know at Honolulu as a relatively small community especially with groups working in ag there's still a lot of I guess disconnect between these groups I think that's probably one of the best assets seems to be far out of this this facilitated process that you guys are helping out with doesn't need to hear that that's kind of a trend that maybe you're seeing across the board of law the other cities before we have to go to break can we get a little background on yourself like how did you so you're a fellow right now with yeah how did you get into this project specific and what's your background so I am from originally a small town on the eastern shore of Maryland of Penn Island so I'm in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay my dad was always really into fishing and saving the bay which kind of spurred my interest in the environment and environmental stewardship so I went to the University of Maryland College Park and studied environmental science and policy and focused on politics and policy and minor in sustainability so those were just things that I my dad and my mom and my family kind of been still the size of me growing up and I pursued it in college and I was a part of a program at the University of Maryland called the federal semester program that had an energy and environment track to it which was a fall seminar paired with a spring internship so one of the adjunct professors for my seminar is someone that works in the office of sustainable community so I just had a really great connection with him because it was a topic that I was so interested in and we were able to leverage that into an internship in his office and office of sustainable communities and then through that I was able to get a fellowship with them where my focus really when I was an intern was on local places and continue to work on that and going back so whether it's helping come to communities like this and just help facilitate the workshop and work with our contractors or we're trying to make more of an effort to show what has happened in the community since we've been there and show their success story so I've been helping with that a lot talking to past communities that we've worked in in terms to track their progress a little bit and see where they are and then also going with like I said with work in Kentucky I went with our office of multimedia back to the community last summer I was able to shoot that short video on what they've done and in a few weeks I'll be going to Williamson, West Virginia which is another great community that we work in and we're gonna show what they've been up to. Hey Aaron and Justine and Matt we're gonna take a short break but before we do I have one question why why was Honolulu selected with these other 27 what is it about Hawaii that attracts EPA here? Right well I think it was a really competitive process there are a lot of great applications and some of the things that we looked for were just the tie to showing how their projects connected to a sense of place and then also the food focus but then there's also just looking at the momentum that's already here I think they were really in a sweet spot between what they already had going on and the capacity so we felt that it would be really beneficial for us to come here because there are some communities that submit wonderful applications but if you look at the capacity side it seems that they could do it without us and you don't want to go to those communities that are just going to be a slam dunk obviously you want to help the people that are in need. Well after three days now of workshops you still feel the same way? Yeah definitely I mean the community tour yesterday was just great seeing all the work that is going on in the food hubs the like aquaponics on their roof of IHS like it was really great and it's really awesome to see the things that are going on here but then also being able to see the challenge parts of the community and where we can work to strengthen what's already going on and build partnerships to make it better and connect everything. Okay we're gonna take a short break one minute we'll be right back with more and we'll be asking you exactly what the curriculum is and who's there teaching and learning. For a very healthy summer watch Viva Hawaii we are here live on Mondays at 3 p.m. and we bring guests like our best health coach Elena Maganto eat well and follow her tips. Viva la comida saludable. Hi I'm Kili Akina president of the Grassroot Institute I'd love you to join us every week Mondays at 2 o'clock p.m. for a Hanukkah go let's work together we report every week on the good things going on in our state as well as the better things that can go on in the future we have guests covering everything from the economy the government and society see you Mondays on a Hanukkah go at 2 o'clock p.m. until then I'm Kili Akina Aloha. Aloha I'm Kirsten Baumgart Turner and I'm fortunate to be able to host sustainable Hawaii at thinktecawaii.com I hope you'll join in with us every Tuesday from 12 noon to 1 p.m. to see the interesting people we have to share with you their information. Aloha. We're back we're live we're here with Justina Spiritu and Matt Johnson they are the hosts of Hawaii Farmer and with them they have a special guest from the EPA an all arise fellow or ease fellow that's Aaron O'Keefe who comes to participate and organize some workshops here at the John A. Burns School of Medicine they join us remote from the School of Medicine and I'm here in our studio and I am hoping you know Justine and Matt that you will ask Aaron exactly what's going on maybe you know yourselves what's going on in these in these workshops what's the curriculum like what are the subjects being discussed who's teaching and facilitating and who's attending I'd like to know about that maybe you could ask her and see what she says great awesome well why don't we start with what's kind of the the template structure that you guys provide and then we can kind of give some context of what's been going on sure so the basic structure of the program is we have obviously our main points of contact and then a steering committee going forward so the points of contact or who submit the application usually and then they put together an internal steering committee of like six people usually and then that group works with so on the federal side the EPA has contractors that are experts in the subject matter so in this case what the speed planning so we have our contractors and then our federal partners in our steering committee and we like to have three conference calls meeting up to the workshop to just kind of a flesh out the logistics of it when we're who and then also talking about the goals and making sure we really know what we're going to focus on going into it and then on the ground we have it's usually one and a half days of workshops and in Honolulu we're doing two and a half days we're gonna have a design focused session tomorrow and that's just because of we are contractors who are really passionate about that because of the complex to the issues here and all the other things going on so usually the day and a half the first day we have we like to have our steering committee and our federal partners do a community tour just to see some relevant projects in the area some the assets and the challenges just to that going into the workshop those out of town and those from in town on the steering committee are just looking at the community in a new way sometimes you get kind of built into your routine and you don't really think about what you're interacting with everyday that's the real benefit I think for the steering committee and then for the federal partners obviously seeing the community since they are a lot of usually and then after that we have our evening session which is often really good for getting the public engagement it is in the evening so we've tried and accommodate around people's work schedules for that purposefully and we kind of talk about the goals again and make sure that those are in line with what the community wants to see it's a lot of where are we now as a community and where do we want to be so kind of there's different exercises that we do in different communities here we did an exercise called city is play where the community and everyone in the room breaks into small groups or individually and you use it's a really creative thing that a lot of the time we first hear about it you're a little skeptical I was and I first heard about it you're using objects that you are would find in maybe like a kindergarten classroom or in a toy chest like leftover objects and it really helps I think for visual thinkers and kind of sometimes in this space it's hard to vocalize everything you want to say so sometimes being able to physically show that is a lot easier so you take the objects and you show what you want to see your community like and sometimes it's easier and it might even make you realize things that you want to think about before so I love if you could like here or having a community garden next to this or just different things that come out like that that's one of the exercises that we did last night so just kind of setting the tone for the next day which would be today and in the morning we kind of recap what we heard yesterday making sure that we're addressing everything that the community brought up not doing anything out and then from that a lot of the time we'll do asset mapping so kind of tagging what's where in the community to see like opportunities to connect those and then in the afternoon which is where we're at now with some people downstairs we actually flush out the action planning on matrixes so we have our three goal areas and then within those we try and identify tangible actions in the short to long-term being like six to six months to like two years visually of the specific actions that we can do the community can do to get themselves off the ground and just get started and going and build someone like them because I think that's another issue that a lot of communities we've seen have is you know what you want to do but it's often very high hard to think about all right that's what they're flushing out right now so it's you'll have your full and then you'll see some action with mechle and within that you'll go through and say okay how do we want to measure the success of this action like what would make that something that we're happy with was successful and then who we can identify as champions that will really take ownership of that action and follow it through and see it to end for potential partners that they could talk to and then a really great part about how we do have to make federal agencies funding this is that we try and get representation from all of them at these workshops so that they can share resources that their agency might have to align with those actions and so that's another topic matrixes resources that it would take to do this but then also potential resources that our partners from USDA or some C or DOT or well you have this grant program that helps people that are trying to do things just like that here so you can find or showing other people that they could talk to that would know more about things like that and so a good example of that that's kind of unfolded again with we went on a tour throughout kind of kakaaka to identify some of the resources that we we have and kind of where they're at and we stopped at the urban farm that is right over here by the medical building yeah and so Hunter and Urban Farm Hawaii have been working on a project where they were able to use that space that's vacant right now to garden and kind of grow some things they've had the land and they're they're kind of building it up but for example they the soil is not there there's not really soil there now and so there's a planter planter bed and during our tour we have our other EPA contact that mentioned you know the ground fields grants a resource that the EPA has that if you're looking to assess a plot of land you can they have the funding or a program that you can use to test the land and then possibly do some remediation so that's I think it's been great to kind of put out there like Erin said things we have and maybe some of the roadblocks that current projects are facing and then kind of use these federal resources use these set of gone to other communities as one like hey did you know about this but I think we've also seen that within the community last night at the session when people are kind of sharing their their kind of vision of what they want to see in terms of more local food production how we can support farmers then we had someone step up and say hey I'm from this office and we offer those kind of resources if you're looking for if you're looking for loans or or different networks it's great to be again we I think I'm we we have a couple plans a state a state plan that talks about food production and food food self-sufficiency and food security which was a like a broad state level and this isn't meant to replicate that but to look at what we at the community level can do that's maybe currently going on that's supports those priorities that were put forward when we're talking about promoting local products on building the capacity of farmers and and how we can make those connections I think kind of a add it on to that it's great how you mentioned that there's all these other plans out there already in the Hawaii state plan and talking about trying to decrease the amount of imports into the state by a certain percentage but what I like about this process is that we're actually getting to the nitty-gritty you know somewhat micro projects that are actually gonna you know lead towards actually making these goals actually feasible and actually happen a lot of these projects I'm telling the urban farm Hawaii project it's a relatively small project right now but it's really the process that they're going through and identifying these things and if it's something that works and people are interested in then can be replicated and not just in Kakaako but you know communities across a lot who and the rest of the state and that's what's also need to is that we're not just looking at you know what's happening in Kakaako we're also looking in other areas that we went and checked out the walking food hub in evil a which is right down the road and also checking out Pacific Gateway Center which is out to leave the so really I think ultimately what's gonna happen and I think the goal is you know we're we're focused here in Kakaako right now but really looking throughout from higher Oahu with all the resources and interests there and then also throughout the state as well let me ask you just Dean and Matt one question you you you were part of the group that filed the application for technical assistance has this program over the past three days met your expectations how would you rate it you don't mind if I ask him that Aaron right rated I would say 7.859 out of 8 yeah you know I think it is brought together what I've kind of learned throughout the application process where we were you know identifying the me in partnership with with Daniel at HCDA kind of identifying the folks that we knew that are working on projects and kind of the agencies and the agencies as well as like landowners that we know we want have to bring everyone to the table two points with that is it is just uncovered like I covered like a large number of additional stakeholders that are active so that's been eye-opening for me and I think for Daniel with within his capacity at HCDA to identify additional resources that they can be looking towards when they're looking at the development in Kakaako but it also brought people from all over the like I want to say like realm or all these different realms and industries reached out to us the Department of Health and the hospitals that have created benefits programs some other folks that we didn't which is I think we've made it really hard for the EPA because we want to rope in all these people that have reached out to us you know with the so we really recognize here the the connecting force that food is and so we have definitely not made it easy on ourselves to try to specify and focus specific because there's so much going on and in addition I think what I what I expected out of this program and have liked about it is that coming from these federal agencies and the EPA gives it's not I think it gives it some credibility in terms of when we say we want to have an implementation plan or an or a next step having these folks here identifying those resources it's it's not I mean like the conversations I have with my friends is kind of what went on last night like what do what are you doing what do you want to see and I think with this program like you mentioned bringing together a potential resource funding resources and concluding implementation plan that gets delivered delivered to us from the consultants just we're having these discussions and they're kind of taking the notes doing that transcription of that so they're gonna hand us something that then we can use however we find it best at that at that point in the process you know if that means the way I've kind of looked at it and looked at it is I think this can be a resource that we can use for funding grant opportunities yeah man of what Justine has said how much of that do you agree with oh well just like normal everything everything she said yeah and I just kind of reiterate that and I think the neat thing about is like we're kind of going through the process that the correct way where there's all these organizations and funding opportunities will pop up and everyone runs in to put in their application and then you have you know kind of the multiple disjointed project proposals going after the same pool of money so I think one of the goal or one of the potential outcomes is we identify you know community-based projects that you know multiple level of groups are interested in and then if we do come to a point like hey this is a project that we want to see have happened then the opportunities for funding become that much easier yeah we are going to go to USDA or other funding organizations for these type of things this is the kind of process that they like to see okay it's just about time to close but Aaron I have a question for you too to close and so I guess you had a good time too I'd like to know how good a time you had wasn't as good for you as it was for those guys and would you come back absolutely I would come back I think this community has done a great job bringing people to them you had about 70 people at the meeting last night which is great and they're from all over it's a really great variety of people which is nice to see and I think that there's just a lot of great work going on here and I would absolutely love to come back and see how it's been implemented and all the what's happened and we'll take that as a thumbs up yeah thumbs up from Aaron O'Keefe of the EPA, Justina Spiritu and Matt Johnson the hosts of Hawaii Farmer thank you so much you guys great discussion Aloha see you next time