 Welcome back to Think Tech. I'm Jay Fidel. This is Journeys of the Mind, and we're going to talk about the Harold K. L. Castle Foundation today with two of its principals, Mitch Belie and Terry George. And by call host is Carl Ackerman, and he will introduce them properly and introduce the subject of our discussion. Well, you know, it's difficult to describe these men because they're so diverse in what they do. But my introduction will be simple and quite simple but just, and that is, these are two of the nicest men who have done more of their fair share in helping the people of Hawaii. And I have to say, very quite specifically, so you have the audience as an example, Mitch Delie and Terry George really helped the Pueblo program at Punejo when it was just beginning. And I think this is one of the leading educational institutions now in Hawaii, and it could not have been possible without Mitch Delie and Terry George. And they also supplied some of the teachers for that organization, which tries to get kids who are underserved in college through TFA. So, you know, it's so, it's so wonderful to be with these two fine gentlemen today. Great. So let's talk about the foundation. Terry, you had some slides, we'll bring out the slides and you can give us a handle on exactly what the foundation is. And we reserve the right to interrupt you at the cross-examine you at the end. Right, Mitch? Well, Mitch is a trained lawyer, so watch out for him. He'll be ready to have a robust conversation. But we're thrilled to be here and tell a little bit of a story of, you know, when you talk about generous men, Carl, Mitch will tell the story of how generous Harold Castle was. I'll just quickly run through a little bit about who we are, so let you peek behind the veil of this unique 501c3 sector of non-profits called the private foundation and this one in particular. So on the first slide, I just wanted to share a picture of who we serve and have always served. It's first and foremost children and youth and it's Windward O'ahu. And we just love this photo and we aim for those kinds of smiles on every child's face regardless of what neighborhood they live in, what their color of their skin is. We particularly have a heart for those who have one or two strikes against them in life. But next slide shows that the problem that we're trying to solve is not enough of our youth are really getting to that photo of graduating and then being on a path to success. In fact, this shows that basically 51% of the graduating class of, I believe, 2021 in our public schools enrolled in college within 12 to 18 months of graduating. So what's happening with the 32% are we're working, maybe doing well and the red ones that are not working, not employed, not in school. So in the next slide we'll share kind of what we're doing to break down that problem and invest in it. So we started looking at what the student's journey is and it really starts in the K-12 system and you can see here that's where half of our investment has been of late. We really try to build up opportunities for students to get the counseling and career support they need to build these rigorous career pathways that include dual credit in high school, getting college credit, which is enormously effective, as well as career academies. And then finally this issue of understanding what the world of work is that they're going to. If we succeed, they'll pick one of these four areas of an AABA trade union, apprenticeship or military, probably at a post-secondary degree because most people will need it and then some success. So the next slide shares a little bit of the state of Hawaii's journey because a lot of what our foundation does, Carl and Jay, is to work to change the effectiveness of large public institutions, including the DOE. All of us have issues with our public school system and we do too. We don't yet have enough consistent teaching and learning in every classroom for every student every day. But look at where we've come in the last 19 or 20 years. We were bottom-dwellers with five other states in the apples-to-apples assessment of how kids are doing academically, where we can compare ourselves with our other states. And we moved to the middle of the pack. And yet the percent that are above proficiency is still low and on the right, the gap between poor and non-poor students is still really stubborn. So in the next slide, I want to share the other area and then Mitch, maybe you can share a little bit about the story of why we decided to take on these unsafe, audacious, ambitious areas of work. So this is about our near-shore oceans, our reef ecosystems. Their price list, 25% of all the world species are found in the 5% of the world's oceans that are coral reefs. Our own reefs have an estimated value of $10 billion and they used to have lots of fish. In the next slide you'll see the status now is that we've lost maybe 75% of our fish biomass in our coral reefs over the last century. We have 55 million gallons of untreated cesspool sewage going in and too many people using the resource. So that's an area that also drives us and that we're thinking about. And then the final couple of slides are that we always have and always will focus on windward Oahu and we'll tell you more about that later. But one of the things we've invested heavily in is in the ecosystem of what's called INA-based education sites, schools, charter schools, regular schools, private schools, and nonprofits that see the outside world as a classroom that can turn on kids' love for science, give them a sense of identity, and connect them to the values of generations and generations of people who have been really good stewards. And finally, the latest new area of our work is really on climate strategy and it's really helping communities that are most likely to be affected by climate change build the skills and the political power in partnerships with the county government to learn how to adapt to that. So that's a little snapshot of what we've been doing lately, Jay. Okay. And so, Mitch, on a percentage basis, how much of what Terry said do you agree with? Well, I agree with everything Terry said. Yeah. Now, probably 101%? Okay. Fair enough. So two things that came up, at least in my mind, Terry, you know, one is with the students, you know, one of the big problems that is probably going to be exacerbated by virtue of the economic directions of our state is students leaving. Yeah. What can the foundation do? What is the foundation doing to keep them here? We can prepare them for high paying full-time jobs in Hawaii. And there are jobs like that here. And that's a lot of what the education strategy Terry just laid out does. It focuses them on an end point of jobs. And those jobs are living wage jobs that would allow them to stay in Hawaii. They'll also allow them to make a lot of money somewhere else. But it will solve that, it can solve that problem. And there are lots of job openings here and coming in healthcare, construction, and other areas where our industry is going to need those kids. Yeah, absolutely. The other thing that came up, at least in my mind, was when you talk about the reefs, you know, there are a number of organizations in Hawaii that are interested including at the university, interested in preserving, protecting the reefs and the animal life in the reef. So Query, how do you coordinate your efforts with those other organizations? With what other organizations in that space are you affiliated? We're affiliated with over a dozen of them, several of whom we helped to create or to bring to Hawaii, Jay. For example, the Nature Conservancy really got started with seed funding from the community foundation to get their feet wet in the oceans. And then literally every year for the last 20 years, we have provided significant support to them. We brought in Conservation International and convinced their board that for the first time they should work in the United States. And then we helped to stand up a network, or a network of networks called CUA, which is a network of communities whose longtime fishing families has chosen to retake Kuliana to rebuild the abundance that they remember from their childhood. So those are three, but we also work really closely with the state, with both the Enforcement Arm of DLNR as well as the Aquatic Resources Arm. And we provided both technical assistance and training to them, helped them to bring in new people into enforcement. And we've helped some of the policy groups to do policy research so we can figure out how to do a better job of honoring communities such as Malama, Manabua, or Haena on Kauai, or Miloleia on the Big Island to get public approval, state approval of their own rules that they know will work because they know the resource better than anybody else. So if I asked you how successful these programs are, what kind of impact you've had, what kind of metrics you can think of to show the success of these programs around the reef? What would you say? Well, we put together when Governor Ike announced at the World Conservation Congress here a goal that by 2030, 30% of our near shore areas would be effectively managed, which means biologically abundant. We brought together a team of 10 scientists and asked them to put together a simple set of nine or 10 metrics, Moku by Moku, so that we can see whether the biological needle was moving up or moving down in terms of health. I will tell you, though, that the earlier metric is more important. Are we people? Because fish are not the problem. People are the problem. And whether or not we are coming together in the right way to really address all the issues, including the land-based sources of problems for our reef. And there, I would say it's harder to measure and it's focused more on things like the number of communities that now have official designations for a better way to manage the reefs. But I would say we're not winning as much as we'd like yet, Mitch. Are we? No, we're not. There are a lot of forces involved in the ocean and commercial fishermen are part of it and recreational fishers are part of it. And many of them agree with us about the need for more abundance. And several of them say, well, yeah, we need more abundance, but we don't want any rules. So that's for the complication. It's the humans. All right, I totally agree to say on that one. So, you know, you mentioned that the Castle Foundation is focused mostly on the north shore, the conical side of things. Yeah, we'd say, we would say, when were to want? Well, Harold Castle made his money in Kailua and Kaniui in like 1915. Mr. Castle was scratching his head with his father and saying, why are we leasing all this land from the rice family? And he decided to buy the fee interest in what he owned, which was almost everything that you can see from the polylock out. That's a rough way to describe it to you. And he was able, after finding himself unable to get financed by local banks to make the purchase, he found financing in San Francisco and made the purchase and bought the fee to that enormous area. And that's where his wealth came from over time. And as a result of that, that's where we feel our philanthropy should be focused. And that's where we need to find marginalized and and people in need of help. So when you talk about the reef, you're not talking about only the reef or reef sea. Well, we're talking public education. We're talking ocean conservation, all oceans around all islands. Am I right? Are we on islands? Yeah, all the main idea. We're talking about the near shore oceans around the main islands of the state of Hawaii. And as you described before, Mitch, if the foundation once, what Herald Castle did, right, was in 1962, he created the foundation with incredibly generous gifts of choice land, both residential and commercial in Kailua, which Mitch managed for many years. And people paid their rents to us. And then when people were able to buy their fee underneath their homes, that went to the Castle Foundation and another portion to the Canary Ranch, which is a private entity that Mitch also chairs, who's beneficiaries of the family. But the foundation's land holdings, those beneficiaries are the children that I showed in that photo, the reefs, the communities that we serve. So we ended up being quite liquid. So now we're worth, Jay and Carl, about 183 million give or take, right, Mitch? Yeah, I think about today's number. Yeah, and we've probably given out since our 60 year history started about 225 million. So we've granted more than we're worth and we're investing the remaining worth in an endowment and hoping to grow that over time so that we can be a perpetual resource for the state. Let me shift back to something that Mitch touched on, and that is building the community that it's covered. I know there's a number of entities involved, but on balance, you guys had a lot to do with the development of the Kailua community. And it's changed just as, you know, the Waikiki side of things has changed. And, you know, the Waikiki side, we have a lot of condo development, including in Mitch's prior location, that is Victoria Ward. And certainly in the Kailua side, everything has changed, too. So can you talk about that, how has it changed under the foundation, under the Castle Foundation and Kaniyoi Ranch? We really start with Harold Kandal, the Long Castle, because Mr. Castle had big strategic thoughts about his land. Church Row goes up and down on your way into Kailua, on the end of Pali Highway. Harold Castle planted Church Row on purpose. He gave to the different faiths of different denominations lands so they could start churches, because he thought churches were one of the strength points in strong communities. And so Church Row happened because of him. Hawaii Law College was a big beneficiary of Mr. Castle's. And they were acquired by HPU and for a long time, they were operating in Winward-Wahoo in their old campus here. And then he realized the need for healthcare on the Winward side of Wahoo and provided a lot of the initial funding for what is now Adventus Health Castle. And so we have hospital care for people here. And he started a number of the schools with lenient gifts. It was an extremely generous guy and he thought strategically about community. That's what I find most interesting when I think back about Mr. Castle is he did that and he had a history of philanthropy. And then as Terry noted, he started the foundation. And the foundation made initial investments in a lot of private education. The majority of the endowment of Ilani School came from land gifts from the Harold Castle Foundation. That was the family's wish and that's another part of the history. And then later in the history of the foundation, Randy Moore was leader and instrumental in thinking about what the foundation should do. And he started a movement from funding private education to funding public education. And then I was lucky enough to be on the board and then given a leadership role and brought the board to the conclusion, let's set strategic goals for the public education system, especially in Winward-Wahoo, and let's see where we can go with investing in public education and whether we can be successful in that. And Terry's slide that shows from 50th in the nation or 47th, we jumped up to the middle in terms of annual just scores. And so we've made an impact. Is there more needed? Absolutely is more needed. And are we trying to figure out what the right things to do with the money is to do that? We sure are. That's great. Let me let me turn it over to Carl for a minute, because this is his time to catch up on his questions. You know, I'm really interested in both, you know, this is a show about personal journeys. Why both of you came to the Harold Kale Castle Foundation? We'll start, you know, with Mitch and then go to Terry. And I have to say something about Mitch de Olie. I mean, you know, he's a successful businessman, as Terry mentioned a lawyer, the savior of Hawaiian Airlines with a group of people, but he is the savior of Hawaiian Airlines back in the day. And also just to show the longevity of the Harold Kale Castle Foundation and education, I remember 20 years ago seeing Mitch de Olie at the CFES College for Every Student Conference back in New York. And, you know, so this is a long-focused strategy of Terry and Mitch in doing this and watching Mitch, even in those days, trying to improve education. So anyway, my question is, what brought you to this kind of philanthropic work? Mitch, we'll start with you, then go to Terry. So it started for me in 1994, and I was the Victoria Ward CEO back then. And I was asked by the family, would I be willing to be a director of the Harold Kale Castle Foundation? And I started with, well, what's that? And then once I learned, I became fascinated and enthralled with the size and the opportunity for making Hawaii a better place through philanthropy. That was the beginning to me. And it was just a part-time volunteer job to be on the board. And if you want me to continue with that, and then I finished at Victoria Ward in 2002, and I thought I was either gonna retire or go back to practicing law. And James Castle Macintosh and John Castle Baldwin called me and said, Mitch, we'd like you to come, do the real estate work for County Way Ranch? And if you took that job, we'd like to make you the first non-family member CEO of the Harold Castle Foundation. And that got me interested. I wasn't sold on the real estate job, but I was really intrigued with the opportunity to make Hawaii a better place with the foundation. And that's my beginning into this leadership role. Oh, wonderful. Terry. So actually, Mitch, you've spent more time with the foundation than any of your other chapters. Am I right? That's true. If you just took it in years, that's true. I didn't, it wasn't as full-time in what I started in 1994, but I still devoted a lot of thought and had a lot of dialogue with people who bought it from way back. So, Mary? And Terry? I guess I was influenced, I graduated from Punahou, went to college, and halfway through, I joined a volunteer program to teach in Indonesia in the Department of Health in Sumatra, in a small city. And two things I learned there. One is, oh my gosh, teaching is incredibly hard and honorable. And so I had respect for good teaching. And the second was how wealthy I was and so many of us are, just by dint of having access to good drinking, clean drinking water, and public health. So I went back and I decided to devote my life to making the world a better place. And I lucked out and managed to work for a variety of nonprofits, including the Ford Foundation in India and Southeast Asia, but I always wanted to move back home. So I did in 1998 and I worked in White and I, running the programs for another foundation and a great foundation, the Consuelo Foundation, for five years. And I got to know the Salted the Earth community. It reinforced that community leaders, be they teachers in classrooms or informal community leaders, usually know how to solve problems and they sure know how to describe them, but they don't always get the resources they need to them. So long comes Mitch asks me, would you like to join? We're doing this new shift to public education change and bringing back the health of the near short fisheries. I jumped at that. And it's been just a signal on or ever since. Well, you're both spent good part of your lives in nonprofits and you're familiar with the nonprofit community, the nonprofit sector in Hawaii. It's a 501C3. But then we've had COVID from 2020 on and arguably we still have huge effects or the shadow effects of COVID in our community and we've had the Maui fires more recently. And as the operators of a nonprofit of major consequence, you must be looking not only at those things which affected the economy, but also specifically affected the nonprofits in the economy. And I wonder if you could comment about how that happens, how that has happened on a macro basis and how it affects your foundation. One of the things Jay that I note right off the start on the COVID subject is COVID made a further distance between students and the places where they're educated. And we moved to a lot of online learning and at least statistically it appears that there was a lot of learning loss for a number of students over a couple of year period. And so it's like, what can we do to help teachers help students catch up and learning loss is an unfair word because it's different in every school and it's different in every classroom. But there are schools and places where there are peers to be strategies that are working. And so Terry and I and our board and our staff are looking at who's doing what where to combat those problems. And what COVID really presented was a series of education challenges that were in the heart of what we were trying to do in the first place. And then Maui just created a big sound of me across everywhere. And one of the things we've watched is people like the Hawaii Community Foundation do a wonderful job of raising funds for Maui recovery. But what all that recovery has done is take funds away from some of the areas where we're normally working. So nearly everyone in philanthropy that needs funding are suffering to some extent because they're lost they've lost some of their funding by reason of people diverting things to Maui. And that's just the world we're in. And we need to look a little harder about which of our organizations that are important are strong enough to survive and what we need to do to help them. Yeah, Terry, I mean, Hawaii is changing. And of course, we all have to change with it. And I wonder how the foundation is changing or contemplates changing, changing your functions or mission, your activities, operations what have you going forward? Because I think you guys recognize perhaps more than most that we are involved in a big change. We share RJ one of the ways we changed during COVID was we took a chunk of our dollars instead of us trying to play Solomon and decide who could get the grants to really stand up what communities needed. We gave it to a set of eight trusted grassroots community leaders and created in Windward Oahu called the Pelina Fund and they make the decisions. And so far they've made 105 grants that have just blown us away by their creativity. And the other way that I think we've changed is we've realized that not only do we have our grant making power as a resource but we have our convening power. So we are connecting people back and forth. So for example, we just received dollars from a large US foundation because they wanted to help Lahina schools get free meals. We've never done that before, but we decided hey, whatever it takes right now to help those kids and their families and their teachers be better off, let's do it. Break the mold. So the foundation is in for the long haul then. It really is perpetual, isn't it? It's linked to the future of Hawaii, isn't it? Absolutely right. That's who we are. Yeah, that's fabulous. We're almost out of time. Mitch, can you give us your imparting comments? What you would like to leave with our viewers? What impressions you would like them to have of your operations, your organization, and your future? As Hawaii changes, so does the Herald Castle Foundation. I direct interested people to castlefoundation.org, which has more information about what we do than is mostly the case with philanthropy. And I would say that both Terry and I and our staff, welcome input from others about what the best use of this philanthropy is. Because we know for sure we're not smart enough to do this on our own. Great. Terry, your closing thoughts, what message would you like to leave? That our nonprofit sector and our public sector both is filled with good people who are doing amazing things. Do not believe everything you read or see in the news. There is so much good out there. There is so much courageousness and compassion and innovation. And we're blessed to be in the middle of that, but it really is all about those people, not about us. So seek them, find them, and if you can, lift them up, encourage them, and if you can, provide a couple dollars to their organization. Great. Thank you, Terry. Thank you, Mitch. And Carl, could you make an appropriate statement of what you would like to see people carry away from this show? And could you do the thanks, please, to our guests? Look, we started and we had a wonderful conversation with two local boys who are doing good in Hawaii. And that's the basic framework from which we go. And I just want to sort of compliment both Mitch and Terry for the work with the Department of Education. And as Terry just said, it's so easy to criticize things, but if you see the enormous progress that the Department of Education has made most recently, and you get to know the wonderful superintendent, Keith Ayashi, you realize there's a lot of hope. And I think that these two men focus on the word hope and doing good. And what else can we ask for in a philanthropic foundation? Yeah, it should be a lesson to all of us. May I say, it's a journey of the mind. So we follow your careers, we follow your activities now and we say she would like to emulate that all of us. Thank you, Mitch. Thank you, Terry. And thank you, Carl. Aloha. Thank you. Thank you. Aloha.