 Aloha, this is Carol Monly, and today's show is Community Matters. My special guest is Nicole Brody. Welcome, Nicole. Thank you so much. Nicole is the Executive Director of Kanu, Hawaii, and today our show is called Building a Compassionate Community, and we want to learn all about Kanu, Hawaii. So, again, welcome, Nicole, and tell us, what is Kanu, Hawaii? Well, there's a lot of ways to describe us. I guess one of them is we are the state's largest grassroots sustainability organization. Another way to describe us is that we're a values-based organization. So the values that we look at are resiliency, sustainability, and compassion, and the way that those three values intersect. So as we try to solve problems around local food, and energy, waste, and civic engagement, we find the most compassionate ways to do that, and ways to include every aspect of our population. So a lot of times, for example, environmental movement can say buy an electric vehicle or install solar panels, and that really only applies to a certain segment of the population who can afford to do that, or who has a single family home or a garage. And so a lot of people who rent or can't afford those things or those rebates kind of get left out of those environmental solutions, and so Kanu tries to find ways that sustainability and environmentalism applies to everybody in ways that everyone can adopt sustainability into their own lives. I see. Okay. So let's step back a little bit. How did, when was Kanu Hawaii founded, and who started it, and how did you develop these three? Yeah. So in, I guess before 2008, a group of about 40 people came together and realized that Hawaii had been trying to solve the same problems for years. And they came together and they said, what are the values that Hawaii has that we want to maintain and that those are strengths, and how can we use that to solve problems, and what can we do as 40 people in a room to make a difference? And they all realized that if each one of them committed to doing something, that together that would aggregate into kind of an impact. And then they realized, well, what if we got lots of 40 more people and we were able to have hundreds and thousands of people coming together and making just small changes and adjustments in their daily life. How would that aggregate into making a difference? And that's where Kanu Hawaii was founded and we started with an online platform where people could make those types of commitments, like I'm going to change out my light bulbs or maybe I'm going to take the bus once a week. And so we were able to calculate, okay, if everyone does what they said they committed to do, then that's going to save the state this many barrels of oil or divert this many pounds of waste from being thrown out. And so those types of, just like things can aggregate into negative effects like greenhouse gases because all of us drive our cars and it adds up into something, we realize you can aggregate positive effects as well. How many, like I said, barrels of oil are saved or what's the equivalent of like how many trees would have been planted because of the energy that was saved or waste that was reduced. And so we encourage people to make those little changes in their own lives. And then Kanu also found the power of bringing people together. So how do we get people out of their homes together and making a difference and volunteering to make changes in their communities on a larger systemic scale, but really just in a way that builds relationships. I see. And so again, could you repeat the three different pillars? Yeah, so it's actually, it's four pillars. So it's local food, energy independence. So trying to make renewable energy as well as saving energy, so food waste reduction and then civic engagement. Civic engagement. As you know, think tech Hawaii, we're very, part of our mission is to promote civic engagement too. So we have a lot in common that way. Yeah. And while we do voter registration and voter education, we also try to think of civic engagement more broadly, so it's just about community and how people can volunteer and come together. So let's take that apart. So each one of these four pillars, how have you addressed them over the last, since 2008? Oh, in a lot of different ways. We have a lot of different projects, which also speaks to how we're funded. So different foundations will fund certain projects that we're working on. Sometimes we're able to have contracts with state agencies that share the same goals and mission that we do for these particular projects. So let's see. So you're a nonprofit. We are. You're funded by either government entities. Do you apply for grants? Mm-hmm. Yep. So foundation grants and, like I said, different state agencies. Yeah. So Hawaii Energy is an example of an agency that worked with us as we promoted energy efficiency. We promoted energy efficiency on our Facebook page, which has about 45,000 followers. And people have told us that through our Facebook, they've been able to save energy and even lower their electricity bills. So that's been really great news. What's your Facebook page address? Oh, if you search Kanu, Hawaii, you can find us on Facebook. So I imagine facebook.com slash kanu, Hawaii. And yeah, so that's the energy efficiency. Yeah. And we also have a course that people can take to learn how to save energy in their home. We're going to be working on creating a new dashboard and gamifying that to make it a little more fun. So it's the course online then? You go to your Facebook page and you can... Yeah. We're going to be promoting it shortly. Yeah. So if people follow us on Facebook, then we'll make sure that we'll put it up there as soon as it's ready. Like I said, we're doing some back stuff so that we can gamify the dashboard and make sure that the website's working. And then we'll get it up and publicized. And yeah, people can start playing. So tell us more about the course. What is the goal of the course? To teach people how to save energy in their homes. I think a lot of people don't realize how much control they can have over their electricity bills. And so there's just a way to teach them these are all the ways you can save energy with your refrigerator, with your television, with your oven. Just little tips. Some of them are, you know, replace the appliance with a new energy star, but most of the tips are for people who might not have that type of ability to buy a whole new appliance in just ways that they can save with what they have. Do you already have courses now for some of your other pillars? No, but we're looking into creating them. I would love to create a course around water conservation, ways that people can save water in their homes, and also waste reduction and even food. So right now for, let's say, water waste, what do you suggest? What are some of the tools or habits or? For water, we haven't done a lot of research on that. So I can't really, I'm not a water conservation expert so much, but I know that. Well, with local food, so there's, we had a eat local challenge. I think people probably know about our eat local challenge that we had a few years back, and we decided to kind of switch that to be grow local. Because again, we know that eating local can be pretty expensive and out of the reach for some people. So we wanted to help people see that growing local was possible. So we had growing local in small spaces, understanding that sometimes people just have an apartment or a condo and they don't have a garden and so ways that they can grow food just on their balcony or in their windowsill. So you provide information about where to get seeds or fertilization? Yeah, we had an expo or a demo where we asked people who had hydroponics and aquaponics and just different technologies about how to grow in small spaces. And then we had them all come to, what was it, the proto hub. This was a few years back and so, yeah, it was just a weekend event that people were able to learn about. So is this something that's done on a regular basis so that? We haven't had a chance to do it again, but we would like to. We want to continue exploring those things. So yeah, each of these projects are sort of short term and as we get the funding, and then as we get the funding, we can get the staff to continue working on these projects. So let's see, those food, ways. Right, water. Water, potentially, we're hoping to do something around that. And waste. Waste is another one. So we had simplify the holidays where we had alternatives for wrapping paper because Christmas ends up being, I think, I'm not sure, it's like doubling our waste production. It's a, we have a lot more garbage as you would expect with more consumption comes more waste and so ways to reduce that. So finding other ways that people can wrap presents and. So what are some of those ways besides newspaper? I wasn't part of the program a few years ago, but we want to do it again. So we're going to be really creative and we're going to try to work with local artists and also come up with new maybe DIY gift giving. So rather than the traditional gifts, find some other different ways that we can let our families and friends know that we care about them around the holidays without maybe the traditional gift purchases. And so we're excited to explore that, like I said, with local artists and people who are into crafts and DIY and just bringing people together to kind of make the holidays a little special. I think I looked at your website and one of the suggestions was during the holidays to give something edible, something that you can consume rather than soap maybe or something that you can eat rather than an animatodge that's going to sit on a shelf or something. Right, yeah, or even toys that get played with but eventually perhaps end up, yeah, they're plastic and yeah. So finding different materials or different ways to give gifts this Christmas. So I wanted to go back to eat local versus grow local. So eat local, was that meant to be going to local restaurants? Yeah, exactly. So it was purchasing local foods and stores. And so Connie worked on helping stores to label what was local. We worked, like I said, with the stores in order to promote labeling. We told people, go to these stores, they've labeled their food as local. And so now I think it's really taken off in a lot of places. You can see that now, and then also with restaurants, telling restaurants if you create a local dish, we'll make sure to publicize that your restaurant has, we did a local seafood, which is onopono seafood. So it's sustainable fisheries and only using fish from those fisheries and showcasing that item on their menu. And we told our people, go to this restaurant, encourage them to serve more of this dish. We call that a carrot mob. So rather than a boycott where you stop doing something or you stop going someplace because they're doing something bad. We encourage people to start going to patronize places and reward them for doing things. And that's called a carrot? A carrot mob. Mob. So it's like a carrot instead of a stick. Right, yeah. I've always been concerned about the amount of waste, food waste after events where they serve trays and trays of food, but only a part of it gets eaten. And then I understand that there may be issues, health issues, that they can't actually re-serve it or bring it to the homeless. But is that something that you get involved in at all? We haven't yet, but it's definitely something that we're interested in. Yeah, because again, so many of these sustainability issues intersect. And so of course that would be food and waste. And I mean, it is an important issue. And even the amount of waste that happens from the farms to the stores, to the restaurants, to the refrigerators, I mean, all the way down the line, there's a place that we could reduce that waste. And so yeah, working with different people and groups to kind of problem solve each of those steps. Have you seen, how have you measured what the community has learned or has implemented as a result of your work since 2008? Well, each of our projects, we've tried to record how many people we've engaged. And so the simplify the holidays that we did a few years back, I wasn't executive director then, so I don't have the exact numbers. But I know that there were, it was the idea of we diverted this much waste, this many pounds of trash from going into the landfill because of our project. And so we try to measure things in that way. We have a t-shirt bag program right now. It's how to convert t-shirts into shopping bags with just a pair of scissors. And we've been tabling a few stores and events to teach people how to do that. And so again, it's diverting how many plastic bags from being used. Because one reusable bag can divert dozens of plastic bags. And so by counting of how many people we've taught how to do this, hopefully it's reduced our plastic bag usage. That sounds like a fun project. It is. People love it. What other projects are you involved in right now? So the the candidate game is another one. So we are registering voters. I think it's interesting to see. I think there's a lot of burnout with this election. I think maybe people, I mean, this is just my thought. It feels like people are a little less engaged this presidential cycle than in 2012. And so trying to find out why that is and engage people around the election. But certainly education is always important. And so while I think there's plenty of information about our presidential candidates, we're focusing on the local races, you know? Right. Mayor of Honolulu as well as other counties and the state races and OHA. And so we want to make sure that people are able to, in an educated way, vote for each of those candidates as well. Good. Well, we're going to take a short break. OK, Nicole. And we'll be right back. This is Karamon Lee, Community Matters. We're talking about Kano, Hawaii today. Hey, and thanks for watching Think Tech Hawaii. My name is Justine Espiritu, and I host the Hawaii Food and Farmer series with my co-host Matthew Johnson of Awaku Fresh. Every week, we bring on farmers as well as all the other individuals and organizations that help support a thriving sustainable food system. In fact, it's interesting to learn what others are doing so you don't have to be a Hawaii resident or producing food on Hawaii to be featured on the show, like today's guest, Wyatt Bryson of Jewels of the Forest and Michael Lab Solutions. Aloha. Thank you. It's been a pleasure being on the show. I love seeing what you guys do, and I really support your mission. And it's really nice being back in Hawaii. And thank you again. It's an honor. So you can see guests like Wyatt every Thursday at 4 PM on Think Tech Hawaii. Thank you. Welcome back. This is Carol Monley, Community Matters. And we're here with Nicole Brody. He was the executive director of Kanu Hawaii. And our program today is Building a Compassion of Community. And Kanu Hawaii has been around since 2008. Before the break, we were talking about something very interesting called the Candidate Game. And as we all know right now in the election season, this is really important to all of our viewers. So tell us a little more we start to talk about. So basically, we ask the candidates questions. We've talked to the community and found out what issues they care about. And so using that information, we come up with a survey basically. And we ask candidates these questions, and they provide us answers. Then we take those answers, we anonymize them. So we remove any names or faces from the answers. And we just ask people to choose which answer they like best. And at the end, it will tell them which candidate they agree with more. Very interesting. So can you give us an example of which type of candidate we're talking about, the mayor's race? Every single race except presidential. OK. And so the mayor, so you send them an email? How do you contact them? So we send them an email, and then they click to the survey, and they just answer the question. And how many questions? We're going to try to do about five. So we're still working on what the questions are going to be. But we're going to, because there are so many races, we want to make sure that people aren't just spending the whole day playing our Candidate Game. So we're going to do about five questions per race. Oh, so does each race have its own set of questions? Sometimes they will be different, because the mayor is going to be working on different issues than a state legislator, and certainly different than the federal representatives. And do you have general categories of areas that you're going to cover? Yeah, so depending on the office, we found that traffic is extremely important to people, as well as homelessness and education. In some cases, police accountability. So we'll look through those issues and figure out which office it makes the most sense to ask those questions to. So there'll be about five questions per race, and people can choose which answer they like the best, and it will tell them who they might want to vote for based on that. And people who have played said that, in some case, it was the first time they voted for a different party. They had always just gone down party lines, and this was the first time they realized that someone else had to do it. They really aligned with another party. Yeah, and so that's why we think it's so powerful to take away party and names and faces. So it's really just based on the issues. It's a very different take and an important way to do it. So how do you publicize this? Do you, how do you get the names? Is it your membership or? You mean to tell people about it? Yeah. Well, we come on shows. We're going to be trying to promote it on morning news shows, on the radio, on Facebook, and encouraging people to play and then share. I think that's really going to be the best ways for people on Facebook and on the other social media sites to play our game and then promote it and say, you know, this is how I figured out who to vote for. You should try it. Wonderful. So one would go on your Facebook page. I would affirmatively have to go on your Facebook page, or do you also reach out to your Facebook? Well, we have a link that. Yes. I think it's 808 game. Or BIT.lee-slash-808-game. I think that's what it is. It should appear on the screen, hopefully. And so people can go there and sign up. 2016 candidate game. There it is. Yeah, exactly. And so if people type in that URL, they can sign up for our candidate game and we'll make sure that they receive an email when the game is up and ready to be played. And about timing, what do you think? About mid-October is when ballots are going to be sent out to people who have decided to vote from home. And so we want to make sure that it's the same time that the game is ready when people have their ballots. Exactly. Yeah. So many more people now are voting not going to be boosted on electricity. Yeah, I'm one of those people. I like to vote from home and have some time with my ballot and really consider things, have a chance to play the game or do some independent research. How do you handle, do you get involved at all in the charter amendments, things like that? Yeah, we're going to be providing informative links to that. I don't know that we'll be able to gamify that in any sort of a way, but we want to make sure that people are able to read up on those issues. And so there are other community groups who are finding resources and providing information and so we will link to those resources. Right, which brings up partnerships with other organizations and we have so many community organizations in Hawaii all striving to improve our community. So how do you partner with some of the other community organizations? In a lot of ways and because we have those four pillars which are pretty diverse, we partner with different organizations for the different issues. And so for civic engagement, we're working with No Vote, No Grumble, with the Office of Elections, with Focused. And so there are a lot of groups who care about civic engagement and advocacy and getting people involved in the political process. And so we work with those community groups for this particular issue. And OHA, of course, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs is also helping us to create this game and encourage people to play it. Okay, and some of you are other partners. So for the waste, we're looking at working with Sustainable Coastlines and Kokua Foundation. So for energy, we work with Hawaiian Electric as well as Hawaii Energy and we actually will be at the energy fair this weekend. On Saturday at Kahala Mall, people should come by and learn about energy and play some fun games. So Kano, Hawaii will have a table or a booth? Yep, and I'm working on creating a little Jeopardy kind of game for people to play. And what else? Food, was your last pillar local food? Yeah, so with food, we work with a lot of local restaurants and stores in the same way that I mentioned before. So people who actually sell food makes. Eat local, grow local. Yeah, and people who grow food as well, we work with them. And yeah, all just trying to problem solve together. How is the funding? Do you all pull resources? It depends on the project. Yeah, so with the Onopono Seafood, we worked directly with restaurants and asked them to create a dish that was from a sustainable fishery. But we worked on getting food stamps accepted at farmers markets and for that we were funded by Kaiser Permanente, I believe they worked with us because they wanna promote people eating local, healthy, fresh food. And so they realized that some of their population wasn't able to access farmers markets because they can't afford it and the SNAP benefits or the food stamps were not accepted there. And so we worked with, through Kaiser's funding and through them, we were able to kind of weed through or waved through the bureaucracy around food stamps to help farmers as well as customers break through that. So now I think more and more farmers markets are accepting food stamps. Yeah, I think that's a tremendous contribution to our community. And that goes back to the compassionate, right? It's understanding that people have barriers from eating local, from growing local and trying to figure out what those are and helping them break those down. Right, and you need an outside, like an organizational counter to take charge and manage all the different issues involved. And like I said, it does mean you have to go to state agencies and there's some bureaucracy and paperwork involved that is sometimes too much for people who have families and also too much for farmers. And so, yeah, finding that mediator, that translator to wade through that and find the solutions. Very good. Tell me more about your membership. I know at one point you have your Facebook friends and I understand how big is your staff. Right now it is pretty small, but we are working on growing it. We have a position available. There's an outreach manager position which would basically handle our social media and our website. So imagine there's people out there who would love to get paid for hanging out on Facebook all day. And so I'm offering that. How do they meet you? They can, I think it's posted on our website, but also through our Facebook page, of course, they can personal message us or they can email us at friends at kanuhawaii.org. Okay, so this is the position that's available. So I'll go over there looking for a job that's in an important community organization. Yeah, and if you check out our Facebook page, we just posted it again today so you can see the job description and what that will look like. So in addition to your staff, your paid staff, volunteers, how many, how do you get your volunteers? Yeah, so we're working on building that volunteer base and finding those issues that people care about. So in 2012, we had a big, strong volunteer base around the voter engagement work, voter registration and education. And we found it a lot harder to engage people this year. And so we're trying to figure out why that is and shift to other issues that maybe people do care more deeply about and things that get people excited. And I think the new generation is very interested in outcomes. They wanna know how is my effort changing the world? How is it really helping? I think they see a lot of organizations doing a lot of good work and they wanna know that they're giving their time to the right one. And so we are going to be committed to being really outcomes-based in that way, saying by helping us, you are helping us to achieve this for Hawaii for the world, it's making this difference. And so we're gonna be coming up with programs. I think, again, like simplify the holidays where it's very tangible, we can say we diverted this many pounds of waste from the landfills. So your volunteers, they come through your, how do they find you though, do they? So we post events on our Facebook page. We have email lists served that people can join on through our website. And so we email people and we're exploring new ways to get in touch with folks. I think social media is really the best way. I think that's where people are spending most of their time and the way they connect and interact. And so we're finding ways to explore those avenues to let people know about our volunteer opportunities. Great. So on a day-to-day basis, give us an example of how you proceed in a way that enhances the sustainability of Hawaii that might differ from somebody who's not aware of some of these issues. Like me personally? So yeah, I think everyone does what they can based on what they know. And we encourage people to do even more. So me personally. Well, I see you a bottle of water. Yeah, I have a bottle of water that I carry around with me all the time. So I don't have to use plastic water bottles, but I'm still drinking water instead of maybe sugary drinks that I would purchase. So yeah, that's something very simple that you can do. I drive a Prius, which again, I suppose is something that people with a little more means are able to do. I turn lights off, I turn fans off, I don't use the AC. How about food? Are your food habits different because of your hair? Yeah, I try to not eat too much meat. I try to purchase things locally. So I buy locally grown milk, locally produced milk, local eggs, that type of stuff. Even if it costs a little more, for me it's worth it. I'm able to make that choice. It's within my means still to choose to make those choices. And so I try to. In long term, where do you see Kano, Hawaii going in terms of as an organization and as part of the community? Yeah, so you mentioned briefly our membership and that was people who signed on to our website when people still used websites and made commitments. And I think now again, people are shifting to social media and so they don't really go to our website. So our long-term goal is to find a way to have people make those commitments again, maybe through social media, but find a way to show all the changes, all the little things that people are doing in their lives, encouraging them to do more, seeing what we can teach them, what we can learn from them about other ways that we can be sustainable as a community and trying to build a movement and understanding that everyone can make a difference. And going back to the compassion, I think, especially when we see homeless populations here, realizing that how important compassion is and that Aloha is so important to Hawaii and to the world, I think Hawaii has a lot to teach everyone. And so being that model and realizing that these are our community members and respecting them and cherishing them and finding ways to take care of everybody. Well, thank you. When they call that, that about does it and that's a wonderful way to end this program on Kano, Hawaii. My guest today has been Nicole Brody, who is the executive director and we talked about building a compassionate community with Kano, Hawaii and we look forward to watching and participating in Kano, Hawaii and your important work. So thank you very much. This is Carol Monlee for Community Matters and we'll see you again. Aloha.