 consulting and this is Think Tech Hawaii's business in Hawaii segment. We hope everyone is doing healthy and well during these times. On the show today we have Keith Amania who is a candidate for mayor for the city and county of Honolulu. Hi Keith. Hi Kathleen. Thank you for being back on the show. I understand that and I saw it as well that you were on Think Tech a couple of weeks back so we appreciate having you on here again to talk about leadership especially during times like these when the whole pandemic has been affecting everyone globally. So let's just launch into this. Tell us a bit about your background. Well before we get into that I just want to acknowledge what you've already mentioned that we are in indeed unprecedented times. These are difficult circumstances for all of us. People are losing their jobs. They're worried about whether when they'll get their next paycheck, whether they'll be able to pay the rent and so we all just need to work hard, work together, stay together. I also want to acknowledge the hard work that many heroes in the community are doing to keep us safe and healthy whether it's our healthcare workers, our first responders, grocery store clerks, and even our school teachers who are plugging away despite these difficult circumstances where schools are closed down and so given that we've been through crises before in Hawaii. I'm sure we'll have crises down the line but we have to do what we've always done is work together, stay together. I remember about 10 years ago during the Great Recession we had tough times as well. When I was running high school sports at the time there were a lot of physical challenges. There was talk of cancelling junior varsity sports in our public schools and that would have been devastating to thousands and thousands of student athletes across the state. There was talk of even cancelling the state championships but the community rallied around and supported our student athletes and came up with the funds to ensure that junior varsity sports and our high school state championships would continue during that economic crisis and I'm confident we can work together and stick together in this crisis and we'll come out even better than before. Very awesome. Let's go over to segue into what you just mentioned. Let's talk about your leadership style. Tell us a bit about it. Well I always try to lead by consensus through collaboration, lead by example. I always try to surround myself with like-minded people, with good people, people who are just as smart and hopefully smarter than me. I like to use the team concept and no individual can accomplish as much as a collection of individuals so I always try to surround myself with great people, people with integrity, with character and I always try to show people that you have to have passion in whatever you pursue. Give your 100% all in everything that you pursue and that you need perseverance and tenacity and the will to get whatever needs to be done done and that's no different in this current crisis. We need teamwork, we need leadership by example and I hope to do that now and in the future. That is absolutely wonderful. I think we all need leaders in our community right now on that note. In your leadership position as a candidate for mayor for the city and county of Honolulu, how are you currently dealing with a COVID-19 pandemic and what initiatives for your team have you implemented? Well there's so much need going on in the community and I've been serving on First Lady Don E. Gay's school breakfast task force for about a year and a half so I knew already that many of our public school students were struggling with getting nutritious meals every day and I knew once this pandemic crisis started that the supply of nutritious meals would be shrunk even more so I banded together a group of nonprofits and other people like Island Interest Foundation, Marcus Mario's Motivate Foundation, an army of my campaign volunteers and the principal and staff of both Kauluvela and Polola Elementary Schools. Those are two low-income schools where almost all of their students qualify for free or reduced lunch and I knew that school is going to be discontinued for an indefinite period possibly through the end of May and through summer that our keiki would not go would go without nutritious meals so we've been able to step up through the help of many as I mentioned and we've been serving 1,000 meals a day at those two schools both breakfast and lunch and it's been a great success so far. Yeah we have seen that on you know your social media account so thank you and your team for doing that for the youth of Hawaii. I know we have some photos of that meal distribution program could you tell us a little bit more about the school meals initiative or anything else that we need to know about it is it still going on and you know where can people go for these meals at this time? Sure I also need to mention that bamboo catering and ABC stores has stepped up and helped prepare the meals for us to distribute excuse me to those two schools and so I want to acknowledge them as well. The program has been very successful so successful that the DOE has actually taken over the meal distribution at those two schools I believe there are now close to 50 sites across the state where public school students 18 and under can get free breakfast and lunch and hopefully they utilize that. I also should mention that there's a lot of other community groups and nonprofits that have stepped up to serve meals to Kiki and Kapuna and it's really gratifying to see our communities banding together and stepping up to serve a need during this critical time so we certainly are proud of our efforts but we need to acknowledge that many many other people have rallied together and helped step up during this time of need. I'm looking at the photos right now and thinking wow those meals look absolutely delicious and I'm getting a little bit hungry so it's really great that you and your team are helping out on this initiative. On that note and you've been out in the community for many years what do you think and believe has the COVID-19 crisis revealed about our community? Well I think it's highlighted the fact that there's already been many families suffering in fact there's many studies out there that show that approximately 50% of households are living paycheck to paycheck and this was before this pandemic situation. Now that situation is heightened and I'm sure the percentages are markedly higher and it shows the need that we need to step up we need to address the struggle that many many families across the state are enduring and that this crisis may last a while so we need to marshal as many resources as we can from whether it's government, non-profit, private companies to help those in need because this may take a while and we need to do what we always do is take care of each other and step up when others around us are in need. I absolutely agree with that you were talking about resources so what do you think are some considerations for local businesses as they not navigate through this crisis and what are some available resources that can help them out at this time? Especially with local businesses. Sure well what what what I hope local businesses do is is to the extent they can keep their employees as employed as as long as possible I know it's tough but employees are the backbone of all of our companies they're the most important resource if you will or ask it and if companies can keep them employed keep them with paychecks even if it means reducing their hours or providing flex benefits so that they can spend time here and there to watch over their children who are at home because school is closed anything that businesses can do in terms of the businesses themselves we encourage them to utilize whatever the government can provide whether it's federal state or city and county assistance I'm sure many people know the CARES Act was recently enacted and that's hopefully going to be a huge boost to small businesses at least in the short term particularly the payroll protection program that can provide relief for up to two months for small businesses of 500 or less employees so hopefully our government can step up as well as companies that have the wherewithal to help other businesses and even the nonprofit sector like I said so far our state and our island has risen up and people are stepping up to help each other and I hope it continues I really appreciate that about you know our community I see the aloha in full force as well as the people you're collaborating so it's very inspiring in spite of all everything that's going on so as for the people that are what are ways that we can support local businesses and the community during this time well one way we can support local businesses the ones that are still operating like our restaurants is to patronize them if you're able to they need as much business as they can get it's really tough especially for our restaurants so my family tries to do what we can here and there to support our local businesses so that's certainly one way to do it another way to do it is to volunteer in the community or donate to your favorite charity that's feeding meals to our keiki and kupuna those are other important ways to serve our community but perhaps the best way that everyone can serve our community is to stay home as much as possible and if you go out to keep your social distance of at least six feet from each other and to wear a mask whenever you're in public the sooner we get rid of the coronavirus in our communities the sooner we can all get back up on our feet and return to business as usual and get the economy kick started again i agree with that as well um how have you and your family been spending the time at home i know you've been and helping out which has been great but the times that you've been how are you coping well it's an adjustment because my wife and i have never worked at home before but now we're working at home and and we know it's necessary so we're we're making the best that we can of this situation and our son is a sophomore in college he was going to college in california and like most island college students who went abroad to study they're all back here and and learning online or through distance learning uh if you will and so that's an adjustment to us too because he was in the fall semester away from home but now he's back and he's having classes throughout the day and given the time difference with the west coast it's interesting because sometimes he has classes as early as four a.m. or or later in the evening hours and so it's a big just adjustment for all of us but we feel fortunate that you know we're doing okay and that's why we want to do what we can to help those who are less fortunate in our community. 4 a.m. is a that is a very early time for class i think when i was structuring my college schedule i the earliest was probably 8 30 so kudos to your son for for that schedule so let's round it back to uh going back to you um for anyone out there who has been following your career your involvement and and when you follow that path of leadership what's uh what are pieces of advice that you would like to give to these individuals well as i mentioned earlier it's important to to lead by example lead with integrity lead with character uh to show that you're going to work as hard as everyone else it's important to surround yourself with like-minded good people who believe in the common cause of doing what's best for the greater good and not any particular special interest and it's also important to not worry about who gets the credit you just need to plug away and do what needs to be done and the credit will take care of itself it really doesn't matter in the end as long as the final goal is accomplished so uh those are kind of the values i try to live by and it's been pretty successful thus far and i hope to continue doing the same things well i i believe the community hopes so as well um is there anything else that you would like to add that i that i haven't covered anything you want to know about the program or yourself or you know what you're currently doing well i just want to reiterate and thank the community for stepping up to help those in need these are difficult times unprecedented times at least in most of our lifetimes but it's important that we stay together that's what makes hawaii special and why we choose to live here because we look out for one another and we care for one another and as i mentioned before we need to thank our our first responders healthcare workers and and everyone else who's out there you know putting their health at risk and safety for the betterment of the rest of us we we owe a huge debt of gratitude to everyone out there who are making our lives as best as as can be under these difficult circumstances i also want to encourage people to continue to serve the community to get involved to pay attention to to what's going on in our community including in politics and and one way people can help is to register to vote and to make sure they vote we have low turnout maybe the lowest in the country and that needs to change if we really want to effectuate change and improve the quality of life for everyone on this island and across the state we need to participate and the least we can do is register to vote and actually vote thank you for that reminder Keith um i'm not known and just to you know just to make things a little bit lighter what is the first thing that you're looking to do once lockdown has been once it is no longer there i know it's we don't know how when that'll be the worst thing that you would do after lockdown probably go to one of our parks or hide your diamond head do do something out in nature that's currently not allowed during this lockdown to keep everyone separated and flatten the curve of of COVID-19 so i'm looking forward to that to take advantage of the fresh outdoors and the beauty of our island we live in one of the greatest places in the world if not the greatest and i look forward to enjoying the things that frankly many of us took for granted and i'm going to appreciate it much much more when we're finally allowed to leave our home like same here i i did not realize how many things i took for granted even just walking out of being in a grocery store without having to worry about proximity to people so thank you for that reminder Keith um and again for everyone tuning in thank you for um going over to think tech hawaii this episode will be available on youtube it is also streamed live so you can visit us at thinktech hawaii.com once again Keith Amimea thank you for being here with us today thank you for having me Kathleen as though it was a pleasure