 Aloha and welcome to Hawaii Food and Farmer series. We're here every Thursday at 4 p.m. Thank you Think Tech for giving us this time and space. I'm your co-host, Justine Espiritu. Maybe Matthew Johnson will join us in the second segment. Who knows? But every week we like to bring on farmers as well as farm supporters, different individuals and organizations that are working to support our local farmers and contributing to building a vibrant local food supply and community in general through food. So today I am super happy to have Summer Monacaia, who is the education specialist with Kokua Foundation, specifically in the INA in schools program. And so I'm really excited to have you on summer. You're doing a lot of great work and you can kind of catch us up with how this program has been developing. And then you yourself have an interesting background with the farming experience you've had and how that kind of reflects the farming experience of others we've had on the show and kind of new trends in that sense. So we're going to catch up on all of that. Great. So let's start with Kokua Foundation and if you can kind of give us the history of the program. Yeah, and how it's kind of evolved. So let's start with that. Great. Well, thanks for having me on the show. Kokua Hawaii Foundation was founded in 2003 by Jack and Kim Johnson. And we have multiple programs in Kokua Hawaii Foundation. I'm part of INA in schools, which is our Farm to School program. It was launched in 2006. And what we do is we aim to connect Keiki students, particularly to their local land and waters and food to create a healthier Hawaii, a healthier future in Hawaii. Okay. And how long have you been in this position? I think I started last October. So just only a little more than a year. Okay. So it seems pretty new, but I've been in a lot of schools and I've had lots of experience and really getting to know all of the people in the community, North Shore community, as well as the larger Hawaii community. So it's been a really good program to be a part of. And the total number of schools in the INA in schools program is 19 now? Yes. So this year we added three more schools, Keolu Elementary, Haleiva Elementary, and Kamaele Academy out in YNI. And so we're at 19 program schools. And then we have educators and other organizations that use our curriculum as well. Yeah. That was an interesting thing. I've had a conversation with someone before that. You guys kind of have a limited capacity to do, to be specifically under Kokua's kind of oversight, but you've been doing trainings where teachers can collect the material and basically carry out the programs in their schools, even if it's not directly under your supervision or training so much. Yes. So do you have a number on how many schools outside of that 19 are using your material to? Yeah. So this is our third or fourth year, I believe, doing educator trainings to include whoever wants to learn about the curriculum in garden, nutrition, and composting. And so far we've trained over 300 educators from over 200 different schools and organizations throughout Hawaii. So we do trainings on O'ahu, Maui, Hawaii Island, and Kaua'i. And we just flew over to California and Santa Barbara and did a training over there for some of their garden educators. Oh, wow. Is that the first time you guys have trained someone in another, a group in another state then? Yes. So it was really interesting because our program is called Aina in Schools. So Aina for land, all that feeds us. And we turned it into an acronym for actively integrating nutrition and agriculture in the schools. A lot of our curriculum is specific to Hawaii. And of course it draws from all kinds of different other cultures. But a lot of our vocabulary and our nutrition and our garden curriculum, especially our Hawaiian garden curriculum, is Hawaiian. And a lot of the values that we teach are Hawaiian values that are universal concepts and universal themes. So I was like, oh no, are they going to be able to understand me what I'm talking about? But it was really good. And they train educators and then their garden educators, like us, go out to different schools and teach in the garden. And so when was the first time you guys did that? Well, the first time we went to California was this summer, I believe. Oh, okay. Was that just in October? I think it was October. Was that last month or two months ago? Okay. But then the garden trainings for the educators about four years ago. But before that, our model is to train parents and community to be the volunteers that go into all the schools and teach. Yeah. I think that's an amazing part of the program as well. Well, one, it's amazing that you have so many dedicated volunteers, but that idea that it's parents and other people in the community that are willing that are there to give their kids and the kids that they might know outside of school. But being the ones to transfer that knowledge and get to have those experiences together is a great element to it. Yeah. I think it's very special. I mean, I come from an education background. So I went to school to be a teacher. And we always teach that your ohana, your parents, grandparents are your first educators. But then our school system doesn't really reflect that where parents and community aren't always involved in every single part of the school day. So it's really nice to include parents and community in our model. And our program runs on our volunteers. And we train them. And they come with their own bits of knowledge and their own place specific information about maybe their ahupua or their land area. And they can share that. And we even have some teams that are, we call them aina teams. That's like a grandparent. So two grandparents, a niece going into, you know, their grandchild's classroom and teachers. So it's, yeah, it's really neat. It's a cool model. And we're so grateful for all of our volunteers that come out and support and dedicate their time. And do you know the number of volunteers you have? So every year it ranges, but it's a big number, about five to six hundred volunteers support the program every year. OK. Yeah. That's amazing. I'm curious of other than number of volunteers, what are some of the, for a program like this, what kind of metrics do you guys look at to compare year after year of we're doing what our mission is or we need to work harder? What are the kind of metrics for a program like this? So we definitely look at how many lessons are being taught, how many volunteers come and go into the schools, how many schools are coming to our trainings and how many people that are coming to our trainings. But I think the greatest metrics and measures are just the individual stories that we get. And that can be from a parent who has just come to Hawaii and they want to be involved in their child to education so they come and we train them and they go into the classroom eight times a year to teach. And after to hear that their engagement with their child has increased and some of the knowledge and experience and lessons that we do in the classroom and in the garden and brought that home. Or now when they go grocery shopping, they say, oh, let's buy this tomato from whole farms because this farmer came to share with us about what they do. And so just those individual stories that they're really taking what we're teaching and the value of our Aina and the importance of being connected and sharing our knowledge and our food and that connection just to hear that these are long term lessons. These are lifelong lessons that Akeke is learning from kindergarten to sixth grade that they're going to be able to implement in their own family when they get older but the immediate impact that it has. Maybe they're growing more food in their gardens now. Maybe they never had a garden and now they can grow plants out of pots or compost their food scraps or eat a little closer to the source than they did a year before. So every little bit counts and every change we celebrate. Yeah. And again, I think there's always the theory of, you teach this at this age before sixth grade and it just becomes something that's normal. It's not about changing their behavior later on. It's just that they grow up and that's their experience. And so you mentioned that sometimes farmers come in. So if you can talk about a little bit of those random connections that the program makes. What are the farmers coming in and doing or different chefs if you want to talk about some of those? Sure. So in our program there's six different components. The nutrition education, garden learning and composting, which is our actual curriculum. But then we have another three other components and one of them is agricultural literacy. And so that's when chefs and farmers and cultural practitioners come into the classroom and share their craft. And so if that's the farmer coming in, so we have Holo Holo farms, Holo farms they come and they bring set up their produce and share with the students what they do and how they grow the food and where their food is sold in the markets or CSA boxes. And then also we have chefs like Ed Kenney who are there of town and chefs all over the island that will take a day out of their super busy schedule to come and cook with the kids. So I think the last visit we just had was Dave Caldero from town came and he taught the fourth graders of Waikiki Elementary how to make luau. So the cooked taro leaves with just luau freshly squeezed coconut milk and I think it was just salt was the other ingredient. That sounds good. And then you also mentioned cultural practitioners. What's like an example of some of the things they would do with the students? Okay, so for example kuii kalo or a demonstration where a kalo farmer or a kalo practitioner comes in and pounds kuii to make kuii for the students. And so before I was working with Koko Ahoye Foundation they actually brought me in to just do these demonstrations and it's really neat because the kids are growing all of these foods. So they're growing kalo or taro all year long and so we're able to harvest some of that and I can share with them maybe a more traditional way of preparing it with the board, the papakuii and the stone, the pohaku kuii. So it's really neat. Yeah, it's tons of fun to do that in the classroom. Okay, and then so specifically for your position we have two minutes before the break but if you can give us a brief overview of what you specifically do as an education specialist in like a typical day. Or even today for example or yesterday that kind of gives us an idea of your typical day. Typical day, it usually involves supporting one of our amazing docent teams or volunteer teams. So today I was at YLI Elementary and we taught a ulu lesson. So I brought my papa and pohaku and we pounded and made ulu poi. Pohe out of the breadfruit because it's breadfruit season and they're learning about native canoe plants. So I can be teaching or I can go and go to a farm and collect some plants to take to other schools, go to Waimea Valley and they donate some plants to us that I'm able to share with the rest of our schools or just those kinds of things and planning our educator trainings and yeah, there's always so much to do. And then are you yourself coordinating who you're going to have come in on what days that falls under your responsibility to coordinate all that and find people? We have a really amazing program manager at our school, Kelly Perry and she is the master coordinator of all of these things and I guess I'm the lucky one that gets to just go in and have fun and work with the teams, know and support them. But yeah, I'd say more of the educator trainings things are more so coordinating what school we're going to be at and what farm field trip we're going to take and things like that. Awesome. Well, we're going to take a quick break and then I want to get more into your specific background. Great. Okay. Thanks, Christine. I'm Ethan Ellen, host of likeable science here on Think Tech Hawaii. Every Friday afternoon at 2 p.m. you'll have a chance to come and listen and learn from scientists around the world. Scientists who talk about their work in meaningful, easy to understand ways and they'll come to appreciate science as a wonderful way of thinking, way of knowing about the world. You'll learn interesting facts, interesting ideas. You'll be stimulated to think more. Please come join us every Friday afternoon at 2 p.m. here on Think Tech Hawaii for likeable science with me, your host Ethan Ellen. Aloha. I'm Kaui Lucas, host of Hawaii is my mainland. I come on every Friday here on Think Tech Hawaii. I also have a blog of the same day at kauilukas.com where you can see all of my past shows. Join me this Friday and every Friday at 3 p.m. Aloha. Aloha and welcome back to Hawaii Food and Farmers series. I'm your host today, Justine Espiritu. Today we have Summer Monikaia from Kokua Foundation, the education specialist. So thank you Summer for kind of giving us that background on the program and what you kind of do on your typical day, doing gardens and nutrition education and working with the students. And so I'm curious to know yours kind of first before again to your background. I wanted to ask again in your position with Kokua kind of trainings that they give you guys to kind of further your education even though you have a really thorough background in what you're doing. I'm curious of what kind of things you've gotten to do. And so you mentioned going to California, you guys did a training there, but you guys also got to check out some cool stuff as well. Yeah. If you want to summarize that for us. So it's great working at Kokua Hawaii Foundation. We are really big on professional development and building our capacity as an organization. So we go and attend conferences all over the place and just visit other sites that are doing similar work so that we can of course learn but also share the amazing work that we're doing in Hawaii. So just this summer we went to Berkeley, California and visited the Edible School Yard which is a project under Alice Waters. And we got to go and visit their middle school and they have a one acre garden and it's beautiful and they also have a kitchen classroom. So that was something I really took away is how do we incorporate even more cooking than we already do a lot of cooking in our lessons but how do you incorporate those values of sitting down as a family and as a community, as students and sharing a meal together. And then what really, how does that transform our communities and the way that we spend our time. That was a really neat one that I got to go and visit. Yeah. And so with Alice Waters, they start the garden and then built a facility to support that further education or did they already have that facility? I think it was created as a partnership with their school, with the school, the Martin Luther King Junior Middle School in that area. And I guess because that area, they're so rich in this kind of culture of farm to table and local eating local. It's something they really wanted to instill in their students in that area. And is that something kind of credited to Alice Waters that she kind of started that? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, that's cool. You got to check out the source. Yeah, and she's really inspired a whole bunch of people and so it's really neat to connect with that energy and know that there's people all over the world doing good things in schools in the context of a public school education, public and charter school education. All that. No, I know Kokua is an important part of the national farm to school network. Have you gotten to travel to be a part of that, not only in the specific site space, but on that conference level of everyone coming together of like hundreds of schools? Have you been able to attend that? Yeah, so earlier in the summer, we went to Wisconsin to Madison, Wisconsin. And then we took a drive and went to a farm called Growing Power. The farmer there who started his name is Will Allen. Oh, have you read the book? Yeah, so we got to go there and learn about what they're doing and urban gardening. Here in Hawaii, we're so blessed to have land and water and planting your food directly in the ground. But to see the creativity and seeing a need that needed to be met and so Will Allen and his team, they started this urban garden and we got to go there. And it started also with just like a farm stand on the side of the street, right? And it's cool to just, I remember reading the book and it's like, you know, they just start doing something and it's amazing to see the progress of what that turns into. So it's really inspiring to just like start something small and you never know what that's going to develop into. Oh, you get to see all the cool stuff. Yeah, it's just so lucky. And I really take each of these experiences and try and enhance my own teaching practice outside and also share with the students. And it's amazing just planting one thing or having one idea and sharing that with people. It can really grow and change a whole community. And so I want to talk more about your experience of farm eating and growing food before in this position. Do you kind of want to talk about that? Sure. So I didn't really grow up growing my own food other than our mango tree that, you know, my dad planted and my grandma had some other trees growing. But I didn't really grow up growing our own food and eating or composting or doing that. And so it wasn't until I found myself living in Australia and I was teaching kindergarten that these kindergartners knew how to compost their own fruit and vegetable scraps. And I had no idea where they were taking these banana fields. They were taking it to the vermiculture, the vermicomposting worm bin. And so with four and five-year-olds, I learned how to grow organic vegetables. And it wasn't soon after that that I got called back home. I basically might not know, or I don't know the English word for it, but might not always telling me that, why are you doing all of this good work in a place that you don't have the greatest influence on, you need to come home. And so basically I came home to teach, to grow healthy food for my family. And so how long ago was this that you came back to Australia? I think that was 2010. So I came home, did my master's degree in education, moved on to my PhD, which I'm almost done now. We'll see. I'm all focused on this relationship of education, Aina, having a good lifestyle, healthy eating. And yeah, so it's been a journey. But along the way, I got to work at some pretty special places, like Copapalo, Iocaneway, and Punaluu, a cauliflower or a taro farm attached to UH Manoa. And over there, I really got to learn a lot about the importance of the varieties of our, remaining varieties of our taro and the connection that we have because of this plant, Halua, connecting us to the elements in the whole of Hawaii. And I really got to learn about planting, using the moon phases, when to plant, when not to plant. Like right now is a perfect time not to plant. We're in that, we're in that face to do other things like weed or take care of some other, things in your garden or you know, don't clown to the ocean. It might be a little rough and look at our weather right now. So really trying to learn a little more about the way that our Hawaiian ancestors really worked in relationship to their place and their environment. And a lot of what they've done lives, well, everything they've done lives in the land, still here and lives within us. And so that's something really neat that I get to share with kindergarten through sixth graders and then the parents and the community and the educators that I train. And you yourself are still growing. You kind of said you have kind of patches throughout the island and then you're sourcing that and bringing it into the schools. So you're really bringing them something to start that you started yourself. Yeah. So where I worked at Kaniwai, the main message there left by the kupuna of the area, Uncle Harry Kunihimichel and some other Hawaiian leaders around the Hawaiian Renaissance time really set that place up to as a place to come and learn. And whatever you learn, you go and you take it with you and you teach others in the context of their own community. And so growing Kalo is one of those things that I learned over there and I've really been able to share different varieties with other schools. So growing at our office, growing Kalo at home with my family so they can harvest the low and make low, low or just growing at our little place in Manoa and then giving those huli out, the cuttings out for other people to grow. Mm-hmm. Yeah. As we have a visitor. So one thing I want to ask is so you said you kind of write the curriculum. What's some new, maybe not even curriculum related, but what's some new developments within the Aina and School Program? Yeah. So for curriculum, we just implemented some Mo'olalo. So Hawaii Mo'olalo is a continuum of talk and it's their stories, but their lessons. And so we tried to pair off in our fourth grade curriculum some of the plants that we plant with a traditional Hawaiian story with different figures in it, like Kamopua, the big God, and some other elements in Hawaiian culture and Hawaiian tradition. So that's a really neat development in our curriculum, but more so just doing more educator trainings and trying to get these so that the teachers that come, they get credit for, and they can move up in their professional development, pay scale and things like that. You mentioned that there's something taking your training, they get those, these further education or professional credits. That's pretty awesome. Yeah. Just, we don't want to waste anybody's time. And if you're coming to learn about how to teach from a garden or how to teach nutrition or composting, like we want that to enter into the schools too, but we also want to contribute to their own development. Was that something you guys had to pursue with the DOE to say, hey, you should, they're learning this great stuff. You should give them credit. You guys kind of initiated that? Yeah. And this, this all happened even before I, before I started at Kupua, you know, and it's with partnerships with the Windward district, CTE district. And so we have these partnerships all over the place, and they're so beneficial and we're so grateful for everybody that comes on board and we can support and they can support us. And so that one on Oahu, they already had going before I came and then now that I'm working, I'm trying to make sure that we can do it on other islands. So even our neighbor island, Kumu'er teachers, that they can, they can get this as well. And also speaking of partnerships where you can support each other, you have also, where the Kupua has been great with setting up the elementary schools as a CSA drop point. So kind of continuing, you have your education programs, but then also giving them the opportunity to continue that way of like, well, why don't we set this up as a CSA and families can purchase a bag of vegetables and pick it right up when they, they pick up their kids and take that home. So it's great that you guys are also facilitating that. So that's awesome. Yeah, it's really neat and that's one of our program components is getting more healthy food on campus through student farmers markets or CSAs. And so any opportunity we get to partner with farmers and food producers, then we'll take it. And it really does help out a family that's coming to pick up their, their cakey, they can go home with their cakey and enough to make, enough veggies to make dinner. Yeah, right. It's all about if you want to make those changes to your diet or your shopping, it's making it convenient. Yeah. And so some of these CSA programs like Oahu Fresh and even Holo Holo Farms, they even donate a percentage of these CSA baskets directly to the school. Or fundraisers. Fundraisers, yeah. And so it's a, it's an actual fundraising program. And so that's so awesome that schools can raise money off of living a healthy lifestyle. We have five seconds left. Okay. So thank you so much for helping out in charity. Thanks for having me. It's been tons of fun. Yeah, thank you. Thank you.