COURTESY YWCA
A YWCA women's basketball team in 1912.
Power House 75 For 75 years, the Laniakea YWCA has stood quietly amidst the ebb and flow of traffic in downtown Honolulu, an oasis for lunchtime crowds and those looking for a workout.
The Laniakea YWCA marks
Kauhane knows what it takes
75 years as an advocate
for women in actionBy Keiko Kiele Akana-Gooch
kakanagooch@starbulletin.comBut few recognize its greater purpose of empowering women.
On the 75th anniversary of Laniakea, YWCA President and Chief Executive Officer Cheryl Kauhane aims to move ahead while embracing the vision of the missionary wives who started the YWCA of Oahu more than a century ago. They recognized that women possess leadership skills, Kauhane said, and needed the time and place to develop those skills.
This may be what Emma Dillingham had in mind April 30, 1900, when she and several of her peers invited dozens of women to her house in Honolulu, where Central Union Church now stands. Nearly 60 women showed up for what would become YWCA of Honolulu, and later YWCA of Oahu.
The Christian organization grew from 17 charter members to today's 3,000 members and a headquarters in the heart of downtown Honolulu.
The most prominent American female architect at the time, Julia Morgan, designed the Laniakea building on Richards Street in 1925. With its elegant archways, sculpted column heads and decorative balconies, Laniakea was recognized in 1978 by the National Register of Historic Places. Out of the more than 700 buildings Morgan designed, Laniakea remained one of her eight favorites, according to Laniakea Operations Manager Kent Miyoshi.
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YWCA president Cheryl Kauhane, second from left, practices hula At YWCA's Camp Kokokahi, which has a new role as a cultural learning center.
Besides light cosmetic changes and renovation, the building hasn't changed much. The organization, on the other hand, has.
Aurora Fruehling, a YWCA Oahu board member in the 1970s and currently on the World Service Council of the YWCA, said she has seen board members change from housewives in the 1970s to businesswomen and, recently, men. YWCA had a stronger Christian aspect before, with Bible readings and a mostly Christian membership. "I've been through so many transitions," said the 67-year-old. But for the most part, "The YW has tried very hard to be open" to everyone.
ALTHOUGH THE YWCA has grown and its programs have changed, its purpose has been written in stone: to empower women and girls to positive leadership positions.
The YWCA's goal in helping women gain equality and power was anything but modest. Fruehling said the organization has taken a stance over the years on several social issues, including abortion, equal rights, domestic violence and hate crimes.
COURTESY YWCA
The Laniakea YWCA fronts Richards Street.
Kauhane said YWCA had a hand in gaining women's suffrage, teaching literacy and supporting America's war efforts. During the war years, YWCA opened the controversial hostess houses, where servicemen could learn proper ways of interacting with women.
YWCA also had community outreach efforts, like its house-on-wheels program, in which members traveled to the plantations, teaching immigrants to speak English.
And with Kauhane at the reins, YWCA Oahu continues to tighten its focus on its mission.
"I'm not inventing anything that's new," Kauhane said. "If anything, the mission has been adapted differently to suit the times."
However, over the years, YWCA had "diminished its effectiveness," Kauhane said. "They've overextended their resources in too many ways. There wasn't a clear message to the community of what the YWCA stands for. We went through a whole identity crisis."
PRIMARILY A WORKOUT facility as of late, Laniakea is now being developed into a leadership center where women can use office equipment and resources to network.
"You can't just stop at being healthy," Kauhane said. The YWCA continues to establish itself as a meeting ground where women can assemble to create change. "Women over lunch can move mountains," she said.
DENNIS ODA / DODA@STARBULLETIN.COM
At YWCA's Camp Kokokahi, Cheryl Kauhane, left, and her kumu hula, Halau Mohala Ilima's Mapuana de Silva, take a break from practice.
YWCA, along with other community partners, is helping them to do just that with a series of leadership workshops titled "A Call to Leadership." The organization has also teamed with Hawaiian culture and language organizations to create a cultural learning center at its Kokokahi facility, often used by the community for camps and retreats. Situated alongside Kaneohe Bay and a fishpond, the 11-acre facility is prime ground for Hawaiian culture in action.
INPEACE, Halau Mohala 'Ilima and Ke Kula 'O Samuel M. Kamakau, an 'Aha Punana Leo Hawaiian language charter school, are a few of the organizations involved in mapping out the cultural center.
Kihei de Silva, the husband of Halau Mohala 'Ilima kumu hula Mapuana de Silva, serves as a cultural consultant on the project. "Hawaiian culture today thrives but it thrives in little places," he said. "There's no place where people can come together and share."
With halau practicing in warehouses, Hawaiian-language schools teaching at churches, and cultural practitioners at taro patches and fishponds around the island, the Kokokahi cultural center would join the dislocated pieces of Hawaiian culture under one roof, Kihei said.
The vision for Kokokahi includes building a hula mound, canoe house, taro patch, native plant gardens, and areas for ceremony, reception, craft-making and food production.
IN ADDITION TO leadership programs and cultural nourishment, YWCA offers programs to foster health and wellness, provide child-care services and transitional housing, and prepare women for employment.
Fernhurst Transitional Housing was once a facility that assisted Hawaii newcomers, students and career women. The housing program now focuses on victims of domestic violence. Women and their families can get temporary housing and receive support services and training programs at Fernhurst.
The Culinary Arts for Enterprising Youth program at Cafe Laniakea trains at-risk kids in culinary arts and restaurant service.
Dress for Success is an international donation program that provides professional attire for economically disadvantaged women seeking long-term employment.
No matter which YWCA facility you visit, "The people make the building," Fruehling said. And for Laniakea, she said, "The building itself symbolizes a place that has met the needs of women and their families over the past 75 years, although its mission doesn't need a building."
Laniakea 75th Anniversary
>> Today: Hawaiian blessing and ribbon-cutting ceremony at Laniakea, 9:30 to 10:30 a.m.>> Friday: Anniversary open house, featuring a Jamaican-themed lunch menu at Cafe Laniakea, fitness demonstrations and guided tours from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; listen to steel-drum musician Greg MacDonald from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.; reggae band THC from 3 to 6 p.m.; and a Mermaids Hawaii performance in the pool from 6 to 7 p.m. Enter to win a two-night stay at the Hilton Hawaiian Village Kalia Tower.
>> Saturday and Sunday: Free fitness assessments 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.; free aerobics class including step, cardio-kickboxing and fitball 9 to 11 a.m.; free swim coaching (must know how to swim) from 2 to 4 p.m.
For more information, call 538-7061, Ext. 216.
'A Call to Leadership'
"Be the Change" (a conversation for action) will be held Aug. 17 at YWCA's Kokokahi Center. "Women Igniting the Spirit of Entrepreneurship" will be held Oct. 10 at the East-West Center.Asian Pacific American Leadership Institute, American Association of Retired Persons, Pacific Asian Center for Entrepreneurship and E-Business and YWCA of Oahu are the event sponsors.
Call: 538-7061, ext. 222.
YWCA membership
Annual membership to the Oahu YWCA is $30 for adults and $15 for seniors and students. Membership is not limited to females and includes access to YWCA facilities and discounts.YWCA members can enroll in classes like aerobics, swimming lessons, yoga, hula and martial arts. Packaged plans with various privileges and options are available from $32 to $59 a month, or pay for classes individually.
For information, call 538-7061.
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Cheryl Kauhane vividly remembers a time several years ago when, as chief operating officer of YWCA of Oahu, she had to approach an elderly woman, a former benefactor, for a donation. Cheryl Kauhane
knows what it takes
for women to excelStories by Keiko Kiele Akana-Gooch
kakanagooch@starbulletin.comThe woman cut her short, and Kauhane was actually thankful. Asking was "tortuous," she said, even though the donor called back with a gift of $100,000 to YWCA.
Although Kauhane, now president and chief executive officer of the nonprofit organization, no longer has donor drive duties, she is still touched by the community's generosity and tries to live up to the responsibility of using the funds for the most benefit.
With a positive outlook, Kauhane has managed to succeed, despite being in the triple minority of being female, Hawaiian and working for a nonprofit.
"Why perpetuate the negative statistics? Focus on the positive," Kauhane said. "If you create conditions for women to excel, they will."
And Kauhane is a perfect example.
At 35, she found herself sitting at the top of the YWCA Oahu totem pole last year, having made the move in four years from restaurant director to Laniakea headquarters director, to senior vice president, COO, and finally CEO and president.
"It's been quite a journey," Kauhane said.
That journey might've never begun if not for the support of her co-workers and predecessor.
Former YWCA Oahu CEO Susan Au Doyle said, "I think it would've been much harder for me to leave had I not been working closer with Cheryl."
Doyle trained Kauhane for the interim CEO position and knew YWCA would be in good hands when she left.
Laniakea operations manager Kent Miyoshi said, "Cheryl embodies the mission of YWCA."
Kauhane never considered applying for the CEO position until receiving suggestions from her comrades. Her first instinct was to say no to offers. She now realizes she made the right decision trying for CEO, saying it taps her strengths in working with people and envisioning the future, much better than her desk job as COO.
So much of her life revolves around the organization that her parents in Maryland say, "We could never get in touch with her.
"She was always working, even on the weekends," Harry "Denis" Kauhane said.
But work has given her something meaningful in return -- self-understanding.
"I've learned more about myself," she said. "I know what feels right."
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