Maui activists honored
with $115,000 award
Two native Hawaiian rights workers on Maui have been awarded a $100,000 Ford Foundation grant to advance their work and an additional $15,000 to support their activities over the next two years, the foundation announced Tuesday in New York.
Kehaulani Filimoe'atu and Blossom Feiteira, president and manager, respectively, of Hawaiian Community Assets in Wailuku, were winners of the 2003 Leadership for a Changing World award, one of 17 granted nationwide from more than 1,300 nominations, the foundation said.
"We're excited and very humbled to get this award," said Filimoe'atu, who said she and Feiteira learned about their selection a month ago, but honored the news embargo set by the foundation.
Hawaiian Community Assets was established in 2000 as a nonprofit program primarily to assist native Hawaiians and focus on "getting our people back on the aina" by helping them through the complexities of home buying, she said.
"For many of our people, the idea of mortgages and financing are foreign and intimidating," Filimoe'atu said.
Filimoe'atu and Feiteira have been invited to the awards dinner in New York City on Oct. 21 and will have an opportunity to meet with the other award winners during a weeklong program.
"It'll give us a chance to meet with our peers and see how the other awardees handle their programs," Filimoe'atu said, adding that many people view Hawaii as being a Pacific paradise with no social problems.
"They don't realize that we face the same challenges, the same social injustices that must be addressed," she said.
The $100,000 will go for advancing Hawaiian Community Assets programs and the $15,000 will be used to train and educate the organization's leaders, Filimoe'atu said.
The awards are given annually to "individuals and leadership teams that are tackling some of the nation's most entrenched social problems," the foundation said.
"These awards recognize the achievement of remarkable people working to bring positive social change to their communities and beyond," said Susan V. Berresford, president of the Ford Foundation.
The three-year-old Leadership for a Changing World Program is a partnership of the Ford Foundation, the Advocacy Institute in Washington, D.C., and the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University.
