For many years Lōkahi has been involved with community service activities. We believe it is important for us as a club to contribute our time and energy to helping improve the quality of our environment and of our community.
Thanks to Al Harjati’s work coordinating with Surfrider Foundation, we joined folks from both the Foundation and the Shidler College of Business, UH-Manoa, in an Ala Wai cleanup project on April 18. Lōkahi had 20 to 30 members there and led the way in removing some major rubbish from the canal.
Because the Surfrider Foundation focuses on coastal water cleanup efforts, they were a bit surprised at the trash in the Ala Wai. Among other items, our team pulled old bikes and bike parts, shopping carts, a pop-up tent, a chaise longue, a bird cage, an air conditioner, a Mac laptop, a skeletal PC desktop, a fax machine, and a relatively new moped from the murky waters of the Ala Wai. All in all we made a good start and we appreciate the opportunity to work with the good people of the Surfrider Foundation and the Shidler College of Business at UH-Manoa. Mai Tai Bar provided a tasty lunch and the Honolulu Zoo allowed volunteers free entry after the project wrapped up.
Special thanks to club member Mark Tomomitsu, representing the State Department of Health, who led the pickup crew that gathered our rubbish from sidewalk collection points.
One of the things we learned was that we need to plan another project to remove as much of the remaining rubbish as we can from the Ala Wai. We’ll be working on that.
In addition to clean-up projects, we expect to make our canoes available for the use of our local high school paddlers. We contribute our equipment and time to help Hawai‘i’s kids experience the joy of outrigger canoe paddling and learn something of Hawai‘i’s culture in the process.
