Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 28, Number 12, 1 December 2011 — We are ready to serve you [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

We are ready to serve you

Hawaiian Home Lands Trust invites beneficiaries: Join us in moving forward

By Alapaki Nahale-a n recent weeks you may have heard about the Hawaiian Home Lands Trust and Kamehameha Schools discussing a new site for the Ka Pua Initiative, a state-of-the-art learning center surrounded by a Hawaiian homestead eommunity on the Wai'anae Coast. This is just one of several exciting projects we at the Trust are gearing up for and we want to make sure that our beneficiaries

are ready to join us. First, a little background on where we're headed and some of our planned projects. When the Hawaiian Homes Act of 1920 was approved nearly 100 years ago, it set into motion Prince Jonah Kūhiō Kalaniana'ole Pi'ikoi's vision for reversing a trend - Native Hawaiians were becoming a dying race. The idea behind the new law was to return our people to their ancestral lands. 'Āina Ho'opulapula, the phrase used to describe the Hawaiian Home Lands program, literally means, "to sprout forth from the land." The current Hawaiian Homes Commission, the new leadership team, and staff of the Hawaiian Home Lands are ready to return more native Hawaiians to the land - 'Āina Ho'opulapula. In October, the Hawaiian Homes Commission approved the Trust's Strategic Goals and Objectives for the next five years - the four goals are: » Deliver diverse homesteading opportunities. » Provide excellent customer

service. » Ensure the hnaneial well-being of the trust. » Reaffirm and assert trust status. With these goals, we hope to build a solid foundation that will support mueh of our work in the coming months and years DELIVER You will see the trust completing projects that were already in the works. Kaupuni Village in Wai'anae is one example. We have and will complete new turnkey and self-help homes in the homesteads of Kānehili in Kapolei, Kumuhau and Kaka'ina in Waimānalo, La'i 'Ōpua in Kona and Pi'ilani Mai Ke Kai in Anahola.

We are also laying the groundwork to develop new residential opportunities such as multi-generational homes inspired by the Hawaiian concept of kauhale. We will be building one Kauhale-style home as a pilot project, slated for completion next summer. Plans are in the works for transitional rentals, condominiums and communities with integrated educational facilities. We will also be rolling out new agricultural and pastoral awards - whieh we have not done for years - that include a focus on clustered sustenance farming agricultural lots. To help determine the needs of our application waitlist beneficiaries, we are in the process of surveying them on the kinds of homesteads and in what areas our beneficiaries want to live. SERVE A staff comment sums up the goal of a renewed emphasis on customer service: "Good customer service benefits both the beneficiaries and the employees/ DHHL." The trust will focus on better communications and relaying

information to beneficiaries and the puhlie. It will also look to professional development to assist staff in focusing on providing excellent customer service. PROTECT The trust has a finite amount of land and resources. As a result, ensuring the hnaneial wellbeing of the trust is an important goal. We will be improving internal operational efficiencies, creating synergistic partnerships and alliances, and diversifying revenues. One of the hurdles on the horizon is the end of the $30 million Act 14 settlement monies in 2013. We will be working within our new goals and objectives to

meet that challenge head-on. ASSERT Reaffirming and asserting Trust status is important in protecting the Trust and advancing the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act. Now that you know a little more about where the Trust is headed, we'd like to make sure that we will be able to contact you, our beneficiaries, when these projects are ready. About 13 percent of those on our application waitlist do not have current addresses and other contact information filed with the Department. If you are an applicant and have moved anytime while waiting for a homestead award, please make sure your address, phone number and other information are current. If you need to change your contact information, you need to fill out an "Information Change Notification Form" and sign it and mail it back to us. You ean get the form in several ways:

» Online: Go to our web site at: www.hawaiianhomelands.org/ and then eliek on "Applications" in right-hand eolumn to get to the Applications Forms. » Phone: Call us at 1-808-620-9500 to request that a form be mailed to you. » Office: Visit us at 91-5420 Kapolei Parkway in Kapolei or at any one of our neighbor island district offices. A list and addresses of our neighbor island offices ean also be found on our web site. Join us - together we ean move the Hawaiian Home Lands Trust forward and fulfill Prince Kūhiō's vision of 'Āina Ho'opulapula. ■ AlapakiNahale-a is the Chairman ofthe Hawaiian Homes Commission and Director of the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands. The views expressed in this Community Forum are those of the author and do not necessariīy reflect the views of the Offlce of Hawaiian Affairs.

KUKAKUKA ^ www.oha.org/kwo | kwo@OHA.org C0MMUNITY F0RUM / NATIVE HAWAIIAN » NEWS | FEATURES | EVENTS