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Matt Hamabata, executive director of The Kohala Center, has been recognized as a nonprofit leader in Hawaii who is making a difference in our community and has been honored with a 2009 Hookele award by the Hawaii Community Foundation and Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation.
“Just as a steersman, hookele, is key to guiding a canoe successfully to its destination, this award recognizes the significant and often less visible role that a nonprofit leader plays in improving the quality of life for Hawaii’s people,” said Christine Van Bergeijk, vice president of programs for the Hawaii Community Foundation.
Hamabata has guided The Kohala Center from its bare-bones founding in January 2001 to a $4.1 million organization in eight short years, based on the vision of building research and educational programs that help communities on the island and around the world to thrive-ecologically, economically, culturally and socially.
“We are blessed with doing meaningful work. For us, doing well comes from doing good,” Hamabata said.
For The Kohala Center, doing well means nearly doubling its operating budget in the last year. And doing good means focusing on the basics of life-food, water, energy, and ecosystem health.
“It feels very rewarding to us at The Kohala Center that we are creating jobs by working with others to foster the well-being of our natural and human communities,” he said.
Hamabata was born and raised in Hanapepe, Kauai. After completing his secondary education at Mid-Pacific Institute in Honolulu, he received his undergraduate degree at Cornell University and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University.
He first taught at Yale University, served as the Dean of Haverford College, and was the Director of Learning at the California Endowment.
He is Professor Emeritus at the Fielding Graduate University, a former Fulbright-Hays Fellow, and a recipient of the Literary Award of the Athenaeum of Philadelphia.
Hamabata was one of four nonprofit leaders honored Aug. 4 at the 8th Annual Hookele Award: A Celebration of Hawai‘i’s Nonprofit Leaders.
Hamabata receives a $10,000 grant to be used for his professional development and renewal.
The Kohala Center Fact Sheet
The Kohala Center, an independent, community-based, eight-year-old center for research and education, is now a $4.1 million organization — up 80 percent from the $2.27 million operating budget for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2009, and nearly four times its operating budget two years ago.
The Kohala Center began in January 2001 with no offices, no employees, and no operating budget, but with the vision of helping communities on the island and around the world to thrive—ecologically, economically, culturally, and socially. Six months later the center received its first grant of $10,000 from a private foundation.
Today, The Kohala Center is an independent, community-based center for research and education that respectfully engages of the Island of Hawaii as an extraordinary and vibrant learning laboratory for humanity. The Kohala Center builds research and teaching programs about and for the environment, partnering with island experts and experts from universities and research agencies that operate in the national and international arena, like the University of Hawaii, Cornell University, Yale University, the Institute for Social Ecology in Vienna, Austria, and the Institue for Advanced Studies at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan.
The Kohala Center projects include:
* The Hawaii Island Sustainable Energy Plan Recommendations — Part of The Kohala Center’s work is to provide high quality information to public agencies, so that we can make societal choices that maximize well-being while minimizing negative effects on our environment. A good example is the Hawaii Island Sustainable Energy Plan Recommendations created for the Hawai‘i County Council and the county Department of Research and Development. This study led to several research-based legislative actions, including a major change in the County’s building codes to increase the energy efficiency of new buildings — moving Hawaii Island from having the most outdated to having the most advanced of environmentally friendly building codes in the state. www.kohalacenter.org/pdf/eshe_…
* The Hawaii Island School Garden Network — The Kohala Center assists more than 45 public, charter, and private schools on Hawaii Island to help build gardening and agricultural programs to encourage increased consumption of locally produced food by involving students, their school communities, and their family networks in food production. www.kohalacenter.org/HISGN/abo…
* County Agricultural Development Plan — Through a contract with the County’s Research and Development Department, The Kohala Center is partnering with Agricon Hawaii LLC, an island-based agricultural consulting firm, to draft a new agriculture plan for the County. The plan will identify emerging opportunities for commercial farming and address critical issues of food security, making recommendations for future resource allocation, policy changes, land-use decisions, and further diversification of agricultural production on the island. An ad hoc committee, composed primarily of island residents who are in the business of farming, will participate in helping to draft the plan with additional information provided by the general public. kohalacenter.org/agplan.html
* The Kohala Watershed Partnership — The Kohala Watershed Partnership, which works in partnership with The Kohala Center, recently received $2.69 million in federal funds through a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) coastal restoration grant to improve the condition of the Pelekane Bay watershed on the leeward coast of Kohala Mountain. The partnership is a voluntary coalition of private landowners and State land managers who joined together to work across property boundaries to manage the forested watershed of Kohala Mountain and to restore and conserve native habits in Kohala. hawp.org/kohala.asp
* The Kahaluu Bay Project and Master Plan — A public-private partnership of many island entities and businesses, overseen by a citizen advisory committee and managed by The Kohala Center. The project is about education. It’s about the environment. And it’s about empowerment. Through education, the community is empowered to care for the environment — Kahaluu Bay and our island planet. More than 200 volunteers and three dozen local businesses support this effort. www.kohalacenter.org/kahaluuba…
* Long-Term Industrial Ecosystem Model Project on Hawaii Island (LIEM) — Research over a period of two decades or more that will provide island residents and leaders with independent information and ongoing analyses of the very highest quality that will guide us — and the world — into a sustainable future. This project, which will model ecological approaches to economic and societal health, has the endorsement of Mayor Billy Kenoi. The Kohala Center works on the project with the county Department of Research and Development in collaboration with the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Redlands Institute, the Institute for Advanced Studies at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan, and the Institute for Social Ecology in Vienna, Austria.
* Hidden Jewels at Kohala Elementary School — A model curriculum integrates the arts, sciences, literacy, and mathematics to make science relevant, accessible, hands-on and fun — with games, books, cards, songs and stories. For the past four years, The Kohala Center has teamed with master science teacher Susan Lehner to implement Hidden Jewels into the Kohala Elementary curriculum. In 2008, a science resource center was built out and fully equipped for the school. www.kohalacenter.org/hiddenjew…
* Frameworks for Success in Science is an innovate Math Science Partnership Program — A concerted effort to improve science education in several Hilo Complex Area elementary schools by bringing resources and faculty from The Kohala Center, UH Hilo, the Aims Education Foundation, as well as DOE curriculum specialists, together to work with elementary teachers. The project, which began in March 2009, is led by Pascale Creek Pinner, 2008 Hawaii State Teacher of the Year. Currently, students from Kaumana, Haaheo and Hilo Union elementary schools (50 percent of the students bound for Hilo Intermediate and Hilo High schools) participate in the program. The goal is to have 85 percent of these students involved in the program. www.kohalacenter.org/framework…
* Cornell/Kipuka Native Hawaiian Student Center Graduate Research Program — For the first time this year, doctoral students from Cornell University joined with post-graduate students from the Kīipuka Native Hawaiian Student Center and Center of Research Excellence in Science and Technology at the University of Hawaii at Hilo to conduct field research in Hawaii Island’s dry forest, coral reef, and anchialine pond habitats. The program builds on an earlier collaboration between Cornell and The Kohala Center, in which doctoral students at Cornell worked with Hawaii Island scientific and cultural groups to develop field research projects in areas of interest to island communities and the scientific community.
* Mellon-Hawaii Fellowship Program — With the support of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and Kamehameha Schools, the Mellon-Hawaii Doctoral and Postdoctoral Fellowship Program was established at The Kohala Center in 2008 to promote leadership development among gifted Hawaiian intellectuals. This is the second year fellowships have been awarded to talented scholars, who will assume leading positions in their fields of research and will head our academic institutions and scholarly societies. The program supported the work of three Native Hawaiian postdoctoral and two doctoral fellows in 2008-09. In 2009-10, this commitment to develop intellectual leadership from Hawaii, for Hawaii and the world will support the work of two postdoctoral and one doctoral fellow. kohalacenter.org/mellon.html
— Find out more:
The Kohala Center: www.kohalacenter.org
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