Get Outside Hawaiʻi!

If you’ve been in Hawaiʻi long enough, you’ve caught an episode of the popular television show, Outside Hawaiʻi.  Delivered straight to your living rooms for over 20 years by host Jen Boneza and the familiar sound of that oh-so-catchy ukulele picking ditty, it remains local cable channel OC16’s highest rated program. Each segment reaches an average of 55,000 households each month.

The creation of local boy, avid fisher and professional filmmaker Cal Hirai, the show has established itself as a trusted voice by and for Hawaiʻi. The show is now produced by the Mālama Learning Center, an equally longstanding local voice for conservation across the islands. The result is a show that encourages all of us to get out into the environment, have fun, and take care in a way that is educational and, well, local.

What better way, then, to socialize the Holomua Initiative—a statewide effort for our communities throughout Hawaiʻi to work alongside the Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR) and its management partners to develop improved monitoring, management, and outreach approaches that will better sustain our beloved ocean resources. Particularly in light of local wariness of government, trusted voices that can share what the Holomua Initiative is trying to do, the people in government and community behind the doing, and the intentions behind what is being done are important. 

Based on this idea, a few years ago the Harold K.L. Castle Foundation was excited to partner with the Mālama Learning Center to develop eight segments helping to humanize DLNR employees—especially those of the Division of Aquatic Resources (DAR) and Division of Conservation and Resources Enforcement (DOCARE). These episodes helped to remind the rest of us that while these state workers are dedicated to their jobs, they are also members of our local community dedicated to Hawaiʻi. An episode on the importance of herbivorous fishes was also developed to coincide with DAR’s public hearings for their new statewide herbivore rules package.  This was helpful for our mainstream public to better understand the importance of these species, not just as food, but reef guardians against the impacts of climate change.

Given its effectiveness, the Foundation will partner with the Mālama Learning Center to produce eight more segments through a new grant. Two will focus on the Holomua Initiative’s Maui Navigation Team. This is timely to coincide with the “talk story” sessions for the island-wide rules package so residents can better understand how the State’s process is capturing locals’ concerns and ideas and having them drive improved approaches to manage our ocean resources. A pair of other segments will cover Makai Watch, a decades-long neighborhood watch program for the ocean that focuses on outreach, education, and compliance. Two more will report on the Hawaiʻi Ocean Stewardship Fee, a new income stream for DAR collected from customers of ocean commercial activity. Strategically, they are holding a final two segments to meet whatever needs may arise in the moment to support the Holomua Initiative. 

This new grant will also include new social media capability that will serve two important functions: (1) it will share content further and to more people online, and (2) it will give Mālama Learning Center the bandwidth to speak to comments and concerns they receive as feedback to their episodes on the internet. 

We recognize that everyone cares deeply for our island home. But, we also know that our home isn’t always well cared-for. The Castle Foundation is excited to support the Holomua Initiative process where those who love our ocean the most and see its problems most clearly, can be central to solving them. We are equally excited to be able to support the Mālama Learning Center to share stories of how this is happening with the rest of us so we can be informed and get involved. So be sure to get Outside Hawaiʻi!