Kamehameha Schools and the University of Hawaiʻi are collaborating on a vision for Mōʻiliʻili lands that Kamehameha Schools owns in the UH area. Leaders from the two educational institutions met at UH Mānoa on Thursday for a charrette, or intense period of planning activity, as part of a long-term partnership dubbed Hui Hoʻopili ʻĀina.
“So the area is about five acres, it’s the parcels where Puck’s Alley is, University and Beretania Street,” explains Kamehameha Schools Director of Development Cathy Camp. “We think it’s a great opportunity to collaborate together and come up with a common vision of what we can do in this area, what types of programs and initiatives we should have in this area, to really further the graduation rates for Native Hawaiians, to help them want to stay in school and graduate and persist.”
The big picture, says Dean Maenette Benham of the Hawaiʻinuiākea School of Hawaiian Knowledge, is “to envision what UH can be for our Native Hawaiian community. How it can benefit the university, our students coming in and their families and their communities, but how it can also benefit Kamehameha Schools—what we call triple bottom line. You know, the commercial bottom line, the educational kuleana and well as their kuleana to Native Hawaiian communities.”
“We’ve had a charrette already with educators, this one is now with our leadership, and we’ll be coming up with a vision, we’ll be looking at all kinds of analysis around that—what the market has to say, what are the uses, how do we make it all work together,” says Camp. “And then hopefully present something to our trustees, that we can push it even further.”
“We’re basically looking at different ways we can find synergistic places, where we can come together to increase the potential of our educational ʻauwai,” explains Benham of the goal “to reach all Native Hawaiian students across the state of Hawaiʻi, in fact, beyond the state of Hawaiʻi.”