CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARBULLETIN.COM
Malosi Uta played outside at Kuhio Park Terrace on Thursday. Kuhio Park Terrace and Kuhio Homes residents will meet today to discuss possibly building a place for their youngest children to play safely.
Kalihi residents
look into safe areas
for kids
Residents at Kuhio Park Terrace and Kuhio Homes will meet today to talk about how to keep their youngest children off the streets.
The children, the average age being below 5, are running around unsupervised in potentially dangerous areas on the grounds of the housing projects near Kamehameha IV Road and School Street, resident association officials say.
Building a place for them to play safely will be the focus of the forum.
The Good Beginnings Alliance/Partnership for Hawaii's Keiki is sponsoring the "talk story" forum from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. today in the field below A Building and the old community hall.
This will be the first time such a format will be used to make people more comfortable in voicing concerns before a small audience instead of a large group, said Kathi Hasegawa, an organizer of the event. Residents have undergone eight weeks of training, she said.
They will staff five booths to listen to and record people's comments about possible solutions to key issues: safety, abuse and neglect, programs and activities, play areas, and health and well-being.
A booth for residents who speak Samoan, Tongan, Marshallese and Chuukese will also be available.
Hasegawa said that at a large forum, usually "only the most outspoken people get up and speak." But at the booths, residents will be able to sit and talk to a designated listener and another person who will write down testimony on butcher-block paper. The paper will be posted so others can read the comments, which will be entered into a computer for agencies to analyze and come up with solutions.
"It's important for people ... to believe they've been heard and to see what they are saying is being put down on paper, not being put down on a tape recorder," Hasegawa said. The format has been used several times successfully in Australia, she added.
Piko Lolotai, vice president of the Kuhio Homes Residents Association, wants a safe place for her grandchildren who live at the housing project to play. A run-down playground was torn down several years ago, and since then, most of the 20 to 30 children play on Ahonui Street, which runs through the Kuhio Homes property.
Cars traveling too fast around the curves, especially in the dark, have barely missed hitting the children, and she is grateful no injuries have occurred, she said.
The three speed bumps on the street are in such disrepair that they have "flattened out," and the yellow striping has faded to nothing.
Deborah Taamu, president of the Kuhio Park Terrace Residents Association, said the youngest children "just hang around with their older siblings, just run around all over here." Because they have no place to go, "they are usually on the big baseball field or back of A and B buildings," she said.
"Their parents are careless, but it's hard to do anything about that," she added.
