 everybody. Thank you for joining us tonight. My name is Matt Winter and I'm one of the 18 volunteer board members of the Hawaii State Bar Foundation. Lawyers with Aloha is the Bar Foundation's motto and is one of our guiding principles. Our board is made up of a cross section of Hawaii's legal community and together we work to provide charitable and philanthropic support to our community by sharing legal expertise, experience and know-how. This year we have undertaken a significant fundraising effort in order to confront and respond to issues that have arisen during the COVID pandemic. Today we're going to highlight some of those efforts. I hope you enjoy today's program and I invite you to learn more about the Hawaii State Bar Foundation by visiting our website at hshbfhi.org. That's Hawaii State Bar Foundation hi.org. I now have the honor to introduce our first speaker. Chief Justice Wreckingwald is someone who is familiar to all of us and this is not by accident or by title. It's because of his significant efforts to make our courts a real part of our community. We are lucky to have such a visible and involved member in our judiciary, let alone one who is our Chief Justice. Please welcome Chief Justice Wreckingwald. Thank you very much Matt. Good afternoon Aloha Maika Ko and Mahalo for coming together this afternoon to celebrate the work of the Hawaii State Bar Foundation. I want to thank the leadership of the board, President Diana Ono, Vice President Jan Boivin, Craig Wagner, the treasurer, and Carol Kitoka, the secretary for all of their hard work. And I want to thank each and every board member for everything they do to advance the work of the foundation. Special Mahalo to Louise Ng who is instrumental in the establishment of the foundation and I understand is going to be stepping down as a director so I want to send a personal thank you to Louise for everything she's done and want to thank each and every one of our speakers here today who'll be coming on the program after me for taking the time to join us. You know the foundation is a key supporter of a number of different important initiatives in the community. I'm going to talk today about two civic education and access to justice and talk in particular about how the efforts of the foundation and support have had a really positive impact at the judiciary. One program that the foundation support has been critical in is something we call courts in the community where our Hawaii Supreme Court takes oral arguments in real cases out on the road across the state to high schools and works with teachers, attorneys who volunteer their time, and others in the community to prepare the students who are going to be participating in this program about the case to have them understand what the court is doing, what the lawyers are doing, understand the issues in the case, and then attend the oral argument and have the opportunity to ask questions afterwards first of the lawyers and then of the justices. We have a lot of partners who make this happen. The William S. Richardson School of Law helps with the curriculum, the individual attorneys critically, our Judiciary History Center, and the teachers who invite us to their classroom. We've reached almost 5,500 students statewide since our first argument under this program back at Farrington High School, I believe it was in 2012. We're almost up to 10 years, but critical to our ability to do this is a foundation support covering expenses that are necessary to help us ensure that the students can participate ranging from paying for the buses so they can come to the site to paying for lunches so when they head back to campus after the argument they can they can have something to eat because really the program runs for most of the morning so those that support really makes it possible for us to have a good positive learning experience for the students and we're so grateful to the foundation for being able to provide its assistance to us. With the pandemic of course we haven't been able to go in person now, but one thing we have been able to do is use remote platforms Zoom and YouTube to allow us to bring students from across the state together at one time. We've done that now twice just last week. We had students from IAM, Moanalua, and Molokai High School with us, almost 160 students. Great question and answer session with the students afterwards. They were really well prepared and had really thoughtful questions and the teacher from Molokai E. Rick Ornelas reached out to me afterwards and said he'd like to get his students involved in our next program hopefully in the spring of 2022 and suggested that we engage with civics with social studies teachers to emphasize the importance of civics education so that's something I thought again just that we're able to reach teachers who are working hard to help educate their students about our democracy, about our constitution, and about our courts is something that's super exciting for us. So you know we really we're looking forward to being able to get back in person and hope we'll be able to do that safely soon, but the remote aspects of the program and having remote capabilities has had one really great benefit which is we're able to bring students together from across the state. So that's really really important and I really want to emphasize the importance of civic education to strengthening our democracy and empowering citizens to be able to be well informed and engaged with their government. Just last month an organization called the American Judicature Society sponsored a national conference here in Honolulu on the importance of civic education and judicial independence. There are a lot of panelists from across the country it was a great meeting for those and for those of you who are there I think you'd agree with me. Really amazing speakers and panelists including Justice Sonia Sotomayor who spent about an hour of her day talking to us about her work advancing civics education and why she thought it was so important. And I think the work of the foundation has been very aligned with those conversations by supporting programs like courts in the community. I think it can only be more important and more necessary in the future to support the effort to ensure that our young people understand the basic principles of our democracy and can participate fully as they move into adulthood. In addition I really want to emphasize the work that the Hawaii State Power Foundation has done in access to justice. It's been a huge area of effort for us ensuring that people who are coming into our courts or civil courts who can't afford an attorney have the ability to be meaningfully heard and present their side of the story. And I know you're going to hear a lot of this from Nalani in a moment so I'm not going to steal her thunder but the $100,000 grant that HSBF made to legal aid I think was money very very well spent. And we as an institution I'll just give you our perspective of course we're in the situation of having to adjudicate cases for evictions under our landlord tenant code. There were thousands of families across our state facing eviction and the grant I think is really enabling legal aid to provide eviction defense and other services to help ensure that families have stable housing and for all of those folks who are at risk of losing their home. And our Waianae District Court to just cite one example legal aid is able to be there at our return dates which is sort of our initial engagement of folks with the court and be able to assist those tenants who are facing eviction. So you know across the board I think that grant has had a huge impact in helping us meet this incredible challenge that the pandemic has brought upon us of so many families being at risk for losing their homes and I want to thank the foundation and the legal aid society for stepping up and helping us to ensure that our justice system operates in an equitable efficient and accessible manner during this particularly during this time of crisis. So I want to just extend my sense of gratitude to the foundation. I want to thank it for thanks to the foundation and its board for its leadership especially during the pandemic. I thank those donors who supported its effort and assure you that the work it's doing is vital to ensuring that we provide justice in our community and that we ensure that we deliver on the promise of justice for all. So thank you for having me here tonight Mahalo Nui. Thank you Chief Justice Reckon Walden. Thank you for all the hard work that you do in our community. Our next speaker is Louise Ng. Many of us know her as one of the founding partners of Alston Hunt Floyd and Ng. But even more people know her for her tireless work in our community. In 2012 Louise was one of the founding members of the Hawaii State Bar Foundation along with Ray St. Chu and other hardworking attorneys. They saw the need to connect lawyers with our community to teach to inspire and to learn. For the past 10 years they've been devoted to helping our community through their work with the Bar Foundation. For Louise our board is not the only board where she devotes her time yet since 2012 she's been an inspirational leader of our foundation and one who is always among the first to help with the project. Her work has helped to define our foundation. At the end of this year Louise and Ray will be stepping off our board. Please help to thank them for their 10 years of service to the Hawaii State Bar Foundation. Please welcome and thank Louise Ng. Good afternoon. I am Louise Ng a partner at Dentons and also one of the founding members and a current board member of the Hawaii State Bar Foundation. I have the honor today of talking about the history of Hawaii State Bar Foundation. This goes back over 10 years. Probably to the 2008 to 2011 timeframe when Jeff Sia, Ray St. Chu, Ray St. Chu, Hugh Jones and I were successive presidents of the Bar Foundation and I believe it was with Jeff's term that we talked about at a retreat programs that would help sustain the Bar Foundation in terms of leadership, impact on the community, funding of public service projects and the like and throughout the other presidencies we discussed options, looked at the idea of forming a Bar Foundation in order to have a sustainable as well as a tax-deductible way of raising money in order to further projects of the Bar Association and other groups that help access to justice and help access to the courts and help educate the community as well on legal issues. So finally in 2011 at the very end of my term we started the incorporation papers for the Hawaii State Bar Foundation and our first board members I believe as of 2012 were Lynn Flanigan who was the just retired director of the State Bar Association, Jeff Sia, Ray St. Chu, Craig Wagnild, Calvin Young, all of us former presidents and myself, all of us former presidents of the Bar Association and so our baby organization started off with a 2013 inaugural fundraiser put on by the Bar Association and just on the eve of that fundraiser we got our 501c3 funding so we could get all of those table purchases and donations tax deductible and we started on the path of raising money and granting out money to increase access to our justice system. Our first beneficiaries at that dinner were the course in the community program that you'll hear about from Chief Justice Recton-Wald as well as various members of the Hawaii Legal Service providers consortium and since then we have grown over the years and along the way we have been helped through various mini-retreats with our wonderful volunteer facilitator Judge Ricky May Amano to whom we owe a great deal of thanks. So over the years we have we have a grants committee and we have solicited grants from various programs and nonprofits that have the goal of increasing access to the justice system and increasing the representation of disadvantaged communities within the justice system and every year we've probably given out about I'd say 20 to $40,000 in grants from monies raised from the Bar Association dinners back when COVID we had those dinners as well as generous supporters of the Bar Foundation and private appeals with each successive group of directors I say that we I would say that we have just grown in ideas, talent programs so to the point where you know we're not just thinking ourselves as a grant giving organization but one that can collaborate with other communities other legal service providers and nonprofits to see how collectively we can contribute to improving our community and improving the quality of legal service and access to justice that people have and you'll hear during the reception about our latest collaboration with the Legal Aid Society of which I'm so proud that members of our board helped collaborate and develop. This year is my last year as a long-serving board member and it's been a privilege and I'm so happy to see that with each generation of our directors we are continuing to grow the vision and the impact that the Bar Foundation can have as well as supporting the legal service and public interest projects of the Bar Association. So thank you all to the wonderful board members I've had the privilege of working with over the years our talented officers and thank you to all of our donors for helping make this happen. Thanks very much. Thanks Louise and now we will move on to our discussion with Nalani Fujimori Kaina and Kelvin Takeda but first I want to share a little bit about Nalani. So Nalani leads with humility and grace she is so accomplished but you would never hear her brag about it so I will brag for her. Nalani is the executive director of the Legal Aid Society of Hawaii. She's born and raised in Hawaii and began her career as an attorney on Moloka'i in a one attorney office. She later served as a managing attorney and deputy director. She's named 20 for the next 20 by Hawaii Business Magazine and was also a Pacific news business leader of the year finalist. She's been recognized by the Hawaii State Bar Association and received the Sea Frederick study award in 2008 for her work on access to justice. She also had a president's award in 2019 and there's more. So Nalani also received the Holkele Award in 2013 from the Hawaii Community Foundation for Outstanding Non-profit Leadership and in 2016 she was chosen to participate in the Amityar Fellows Program that's sponsored by Pierre Amityar, the eBay founder. The program has created a network of societal change leaders in Hawaii. Nalani is a director with the National Legal Aid and Defender Association, a commissioner on the Hawaii Access to Justice Commission and a former chair of the Hawaii State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. She is also the immediate past president and director of the Board of Rural Community Assistance Corps, a non-profit organization with assets over 150 million that provides training, technical and financial resources and advocacy to rural communities in the West. Finally, Nalani is a graduate of McAllister College NYU School of Law and the Kamehameha Schools. We are proud to have Nalani join us today. Thanks, Jen, and I have the privilege of introducing Kelvin Taketa tonight. Kelvin, born and raised in Hawaii, grew up in a family that was involved in both construction as well as cattle ranching. After graduating from Punahou School, Kelvin went on to Colorado College and then received his JD from Hastings College of Law. When Kelvin came home from law school, he told his mother that he was going to work for a non-profit. She said, okay, and that began Kelvin's 40-plus year career in the non-profit sector. He's best known in Hawaii for the almost 20 years he served as the CEO of Hawaii Community Foundation. He's recognized on a national level as one of the most powerful and influential people in the national non-profit world. Under Kelvin's leadership, Hawaii Community Foundation became the leader in facilitating charitable investments in Hawaii and became a trusted community resource on charitable trends and best practices in our state. In his retirement, Kelvin serves on a number of boards, which include Hawaii Leadership Forum, which is the Omidyar Fellows, Stepsby Foundation, Elemental Accelerator, Hawaiian Electric, Leading America, as well as the Center for Effective Philanthropy. I'm humbled to present to you this evening Kelvin Taketa, who will be talking story with Nalani Fujimori-Kina. Well, thanks, Diane, for that introduction. I'm always amazed when someone talks about my 40-year career when I feel like I'm still 31 years old, so I have a hard time doing the math. CJ, thank you for your leadership. It's always a pleasure to see you, and I really admire everything you've done as the head of the judiciary. And I want to thank all the people who are joining in tonight to support the Bar Foundation and to spend a few minutes talking with Nalani, who is one of my idols. We've been colleagues and friends for many years. I am a donor and a supporter of the Legal Aid Society in no small part because of the tremendous talent and courage that she has as an executive director. So I'm happy to be here, and I'm going to really put the spotlight on Nalani because our conversation is going to be about the impact the Bar Foundation has made through its grant to Legal Aid Society. So Nalani, why don't you start off and talk a little bit about the current grant and what has last done with the funds and what's been the impact that you're seeing so far. But, you know, the current grant has done a lot for us. I mean, it's really provided us an opportunity to provide services in two communities specifically. We're really looking at the leeward side of this island as well as in the Kona area. And so it really is providing legal assistance, legal advice, and helping people really understand what their rights are in a particular eviction situation. I think sometimes we talk a lot about defense work, but really, and when litigation, but sometimes it's simple. Sometimes it's about giving somebody some advice so that they know what to do when they're facing a 45-day notice that what their rights are, that facing that addiction may make it more difficult in the future for them to find housing and then maybe they should look at potentially moving out. In some situations we might be negotiating with the landlord to find a way that we can make both of those parties feel like they're being heard and sometimes also being able to preserve that Section 8 voucher, which is really, really critical for so many of the people that we work with. The funding as CJ talked a little bit about is also supporting kind of our state, our island-wide program that we're doing here in Oahu, which is providing legal information at return dates for land or tenant cases. And this funding is specifically focused in the Waianae area, but we're also, through other funding support, has been able to do it in other places. You know, for one of the areas that we've been working with in both Kona and leeward have really been some of the cases that we've seen. We've been seeing lockouts where landlords have locked people out of their units. And in situations they've locked them out let them go, not letting them back in, refusing to let them back in. And then re-renting the property. In one case that we're working on right now, they actually re-rented the room that she was renting and then they re-rented the entire unit to someone else. And I mean, it's those kinds of practices that really legal aid is there to try to prevent and to stop. We also had situations where, you know, we had somebody that was given an illegal notice. And this is prior to the lifting of the eviction moratorium. And in that situation, you know, we actually lost the eviction hearing, but we've actually been able to sense appeal. And there was a stay granted by the Intermediate Court of Appeals and also clarified some issues around supersedious bonds. In this situation, the judge indicated that the tenant would have to put in $15,000 for supersedious bond, which would be equal to what they expected monthly rent was times the amount of time that an appeal would take. And we got clarification just last week that all of the tenant we need to do is just put in the monthly payments of what that rent would actually be in order for the bond and the hearing to continue. So again, I mean, this is the kind of work that we're seeing. And I think really the support of the foundation has been to really focus in these two areas where we've seen, you know, unfortunately similar cases with lockouts and just practices that I think, you know, really are hurting our community and making people homeless. And, you know, I talked a little bit about that Kona case where somebody was locked down and she's currently homeless, you know, and living on the beach and living the streets. And we're seeing a lot of that. There's no place for many of these folks to go. Well, Nalani, you know, you and I have talked about before what happens to and you're in these situations like this where the cascading effects in terms of the stability that an individual or family may have are really compromised. I mean, you know, someone who's locked out or doesn't have a place to stay, it's difficult for them to hold their job. In the case of families with children, they lose the stability of their home and not only that, oftentimes, they're forced to move school districts and their kids are uprooted. So the societal costs are way larger than just the impact of losing their house. Definitely. I mean, I think one of the things that's really brought light to this is I'm not sure if many of you have heard of Matthew Desmond's book. It was a study that he did in, you know, I think it was in Milwaukee. And he really followed these families that went through the cycle of eviction. Now, one of the things that's really important is once somebody's evicted, it's hard for somebody to get back into housing. And that's the other thing that we're really seeing with this community. And across, you know, across the state, rents are going up. You know, when you hear the stories about people not being able to find housing after they've been evicted, because, you know, now the amount that they're asking for is just out of control, or the number of people that are applying are too many. And they're not going to be the first person that's going to be on that list. And all of that, you know, affects families and children. And, you know, we are going to start seeing that impact in the schools. You know, we've been working closely with all of the different providers across the state. And one of the groups is really the Department of Education and their Homeless Liaison Program. We just did some training for them the other day about how legal services can actually help to intervene and help some of these families. But, you know, it's so critical that we have to find a way to prevent homelessness and find ways to connect people up with the resources that may and are available at least right now. You know, we saw this, Nalani, with the great recession, right? I mean, 2008 and 2009. And the thing I worry about now, and I'm sure you're starting to see it, is even though things seem to loosen up or get better, the detail of what happens to people as the economy improves, it's not an instantaneous feedback loop. And so the kinds of people that are compromised in this situation, we should expect to see the circumstances you're describing continue for quite a while. Exactly. And I think especially, you know, I think what's been great about, you know, Act 57 and the rules and that which kind of delayed the process of, you know, mass evictions that were going to happen here and all the federal rental assistance that has come into play has delayed even further of that process. I mean, right now, you know, families are eligible to for at least potentially 18 months of rental assistance. And we know, at least for now, we've had about almost 20,000 families that may be eligible for these services. So if you have 20,000, you know, households that may be facing eviction, if we if we aren't able to find jobs, if they aren't able to find ways to recover, and some of these families may not be able to, you know, you also have families that were impacted by COVID and long term impacts of COVID and may not be able to return to work. And so I think, you know, again, our part in this, we're only part of the solution, right? And we're part of that solution in trying to make sure that people know their rights, finding ways and connecting them up to services. And it's just, you know, there's just so much that we need to do in this area. And, you know, again, we are so appreciative of everything that the foundation has done to help, you know, help move forward this work. Have you seen, you know, when the great recession happened, everybody was anxious to get back to normal. But we saw then what I think we're seeing now, which there are some real structural challenges. Last year, there were more homeless, there were more hungry families in America than ever before. 20% of the hunger in the United States were children. And we still know from feeding America that there are 40 million Americans that are food insecure every week. You know, so as the economy improves, I think the one thing I just want to call out to the people that are joining us today is it is going to be a long ride in part for a lot of the people we're concerned about because there are structural issues at play that don't easily resolve themselves just because the economy improves. Yeah. And, you know, and just to add to that, I think what's been really interesting for us has been kind of, you know, the emergency, the way the emergency assistance has come in, right? All those emergency assistance has come in, all these waivers have come in and because of COVID certain things haven't had to happen. You know, I don't know how many of, how many folks know about this, but, you know, there was a whole issue around food stamps and food stamp certification recently where the mass amounts of certifications that had to happen in a short period of time, but DHS not being able to have the staffing to do all that, which led to a lot of food and security. So there are a lot of people that did not get their food stamps last month and had to see assistance and emergency assistance for food. So again, I give that example. I know we're talking sort of about housing, but you brought up feeding Kelvin. And I mean, I think what it is is that we also are going to see these, you know, systematic approaches of, we did this to, you know, stop the bleeding here, but these are really going to be the longer term effects as we start to, we get our system back to what we, what we had before. And that's where lawyers and some of the work that we're trying to do is, is going to be, I think, really important. Yeah. Well, CJ brought up access to justice, but you talked about Section 8 housing vouchers. I mean, the one thing I know from my own experience has been that I went working with people that are trying to access benefits, you know, whether it's SNAP funding or SNAP benefits or housing vouchers or the like, the systems are very, very complicated. It's not an easy thing to do. So that's where legal aid, I think, really provides a lot of support and technical assistance and helping people to navigate those systems, especially if there are challenges where they're not native English speakers. So, you know, I just want to thank you for all the work you do and what legal aid does. I just want to kind of close this section. Maybe you can talk specifically about what the Bar Foundation support means to you and your colleagues, because there are a lot of lawyers at Legal Aid and I'm sure it must be inspiring for them to know that there are other members of the Bar out there that are supporting what they're doing. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, the generosity of the Bar Association Foundation this time is just, you know, it can't be matched. And I know this is one of the largest gifts that the Foundation has given. And, you know, we are so honored to be part of that and to be the recipient of it. I mean, I think, you know, we try to do our best. We try to be really open and honest about the work that we do. And, you know, we know that maybe the, you know, we haven't seen and I know that this is one of the issues. We haven't quite seen the complete wave of eviction yet. But I will say it's coming. I mean, we know it's coming. We've just found ways to delay it. And I think to the points that Kelvin has really made, it is about kind of this, you know, systemic issues that we're trying to face. But, you know, knowing that the Foundation has really been behind us and the firms in the community and working together with really Diane and Jan around kind of, you know, figuring out the grant and how this is going to work and what made sense for the Foundation to invest in has really been a great experience for me. So again, mahalo mahalo mahalo mahalo. Well, Diane, I want to close off by thanking you for inviting us to be a part of this and to join this event. And I really want to thank all the people who have dialed in or zoomed in, as it were. You know, you're kind of, we're preaching to the choir. If you're involved in this call, we know you're already supportive of the community and of the Bar Foundation. So my call to action for you is to reach out to your colleagues and to share the great work of the Bar Foundation and to encourage them, especially at this time of year, when they're racking up their pro bono hours or trying to figure out what cash contribution they're going to make in lieu of their pro bono hours to really think hard about reaching deep. The situation is not, we're not out of it. And I think that the Bar has a unique role to play in our quest for a more just and equitable society. And its leadership in times like this is essential. So I want to thank you. And I want to challenge you all to continue your great work and actually step it up because Legal Aid can use more funding in the next year. So thanks, Nalani. Thank you, Diane. Thank you, Calvin. Thank you. Thank you so much, Calvin and Nalani. You're both truly inspiring and we appreciate your hard work and your time today. We are now going to show you a short video about the inspiration that brought us to our partnership with the Legal Aid Society and the Hawaii Community Foundation. This will be available on our website. And we hope that you share it and that it inspires you and that inspires others to join our effort. Thank you. Earlier in the year, we had a board retreat where we had speakers from Hawaii Community Foundation, Legal Aid Society, as well as Castle Foundation, who told us about the work they're doing in the community, how Hawaii Community Foundation sees the need for organizations, nonprofits like us to partner with other organizations so that we can have a much bigger impact rather than trying to work in a silo. Our organization is really dedicated to assisting those who are low income in basic civil legal assistance matters like housing and consumer law, family law, public assistance, immigration. It's a variety of issues that we do assist and I like to call it basic necessity law. You know, it's the kind of law that you need in order for people to just remove the barriers so that they can survive in our community. You know, as we come out of the pandemic and as we start to deal with this moving out of the eviction moratorium, I think the move that the Hawaii Bar Association made, the foundation made in engaging was critical. Having their voice at the table, bringing credibility is a very important voice. And I just would encourage those in the legal system and those not in the legal system to support the foundation in this effort. They're really a new player in this market right now and we found them to be a very refreshing voice that will continue, we hope, to grow. One of the things that we really saw during this period of time was just a lot of confusion over how the war terms work, whether or not it applied in certain situations and so much of our work, you know, pre the lifting of eviction moratorium was really trying to help people understand what the rights and responsibilities were under the moratoriums. When the moratorium lifted on August 8th, you know, I think there was a lot of people that were afraid about what was going to happen next. And we got a lot of calls from people and we did a lot of community education around trying to get people to respond to notices from the mediation centers, to get them to respond if there was a filing in court. And, you know, and that was the work that we've really been focused on. You know, I think the hardest thing that we've seen during this crisis is people just not understanding, the landlords not understanding what they need to do and that there are solutions out there for both families and, you know, for landlords and tenants. I would now like to introduce three people who have been instrumental to our work this year. Kimmy Edie Foster, Marty Fritz, and Diane Ono. Beginning with Kimmy, they will speak about what motivated them and their firms to contribute both time and money that enabled this year's grants. Thank you. Hi. Yeah, I'm Kimmy. I'm an attorney at Chunker. And thank you, Matt. And thank you, Nalani, so much for, you know, sharing your time and your efforts. As for what motivated us, well, Chunker has always been a very locally based firm. We believe in, you know, it's not enough to just kind of pay lip service to service projects in the community. You actually have to step in. And so when we were told, because I sit on the board of the eviction wave that was coming, we knew we had to do something. You know, evictions, homelessness, like you said before, it's a cascading issue. It doesn't affect just that family. It affects the entire community. And if you don't do something about the start, you're going to feel the effects later on. And just hearing the stories and hearing, you know, very, very basic education issues where we don't think of those things because we know the answer to that. We know that we can't be evicted without, you know, X, Y, and Z happening. We know that, you know, whatever this landlord is doing or what this tenant might be doing is not legal. But these people don't have those resources. And so being able to contribute money towards legal aid to help educate these people and kind of, you know, stop bleeding in those areas has been just a huge motivator for us. And we're very, very thankful for the opportunity to partner. Aloha. My name is Marty Fritz. I'm a partner at Trecker Fritz and Williams. And I'm a longtime board member and also a very enthusiastic donor to the White State Bar Foundation. Our firm really likes the Bar Foundation. Part of the reason why we like the Bar Foundation is that it gives an opportunity to lawyers to give back to the legal profession in a positive way. During this COVID time, one of the things that's really stood out to me about the Bar Foundation is that it allows flexibility. We can go out and raise the money and have it available for needs that come up. And a perfect example is the legal aid matter. And I think there's a huge amount of potential for the Bar Foundation to raise additional funds in the future. One other thing about the Bar Foundation that people really don't think that much about is that the Bar Foundation takes care of a lot of things that are longtime staples of the legal community. For example, the bar dinner and also one that's dear to my heart, the golf tournament. And there are few opportunities anymore to have a lot of members of the bar get together. And both the dinner and also the golf tournament are two perfect elements where, you know, older and younger and middle-aged lawyers can get together because there aren't very many of those kinds of opportunities anymore. So the long and short of it is that we think being a donor to the Bar Foundation is important. One other thing that I would point out is that right now under the COVID and the special federal regulations, this is a perfect time for people to be donating money to the Bar Foundation. There's relaxed regulations regarding charitable giving. And right now, before the end of the year, is a perfect time. And I thank everybody who's involved in this entire project. Thanks. Thanks, Kimmy and Marty. Thank you all for coming to our reception this evening. We so appreciate everyone who's taking time to do this with us. We are hoping to do this in person next year. I'm not sure what you know about me. Already retired from the practice of law, Ray St. Chew asked me to serve on the HSBF board. My legal career served me well. And with that sense of gratitude, I felt it was time for me to give back. Then the pandemic hit and we are still in it. Because it's been ongoing for almost two years now, it might be easy for some of us to get desensitized to the needs of the vulnerable in our community. Many are one paycheck away from a crisis, just from a crisis. Just as Hawaii lawyers came out to help those who lost their homes in the volcano or needed to file insurance claims on Kauai after the flooding, there are legal needs in our community for those who are on the verge of losing the roof over their heads. I was driving in Monday's torrential downpour in the afternoon when it hit me that housing is such a basic need for human survival. I came out of the eye doctor's office. My eyes were dilated. I was rushing home to get on a Zoom call. I was just thinking about what I had to do. And then I was stuck in traffic on P.E. Kauai. That was at a virtual standstill. So I took the first right that I could into a neighborhood. But the road was like a river of water coming at me. And in the road were two shopping carts that had fallen over. And on the side, I could see clothes and bags strewn everywhere. The people to whom all of this belonged were nowhere in sight. I'm not sure where they'd gone, but there was no way they could stay in the street. It just saddened me to think that people in our Hawaii live this way. And it brought home to me how important legal representation and legal information over housing issues such as evictions really is. Recently I was reminded, and I'm taking this opportunity to brag a little because I'm so proud, I was reminded that we all took an oath when we were sworn in as attorneys. My nephew, Jared Ono, was sworn in recently last month as a new attorney. We all swore to the best of our ability that we would give you consideration to the legal needs of those without access to justice. So at this festive and most wonderful time of the year, let's find ways to use our resources to fulfill that oath. Many of you, as Kelvin mentioned, are doing your online bar renewal registration. And it's pretty late in the year to fit in 50 hours of pro bono service. May we suggest to you a donation in the amount of at least $500? Please consider donating to Hawaii State Bar Foundation. Lastly, I want to be sure to thank all of you who stepped up and gave over this last year as well as this year in very significant ways and encouraged your firms to do so as well. We are once again calling on everyone to step forward at this time of need. Happy holidays to everyone and thank you again from all of us at Hawaii State Bar Foundation. Thank you, Diane. I want to thank all of our speakers and our contributors. And I want to thank you for joining us today. Please consider visiting our website at hsbfhi.org to learn more about your Bar Foundation. We'd love to have you consider helping in any way you can. Thank you very much.