'Ike Ku'oko'a

KEY Project will host a training meeting for 'Ike Ku'oko'a directed at those volunteers interested in participating in the movement. The meeting will be held on wednesday 28 Mar. 5pm to 9pm; more details will be given. 'Ike Ku'oko'a, Liberating Knowledge, "the newspaper typescripting project, began taking 60,000 digital scans of Hawaiian-language newspapers printed from 1834 to 1948 and transcribing them into searchable typescript" in November of last year, says their website. 


Now thousands volunteers are onboard, giving their time and energy to transcribe the the scanned pages and make the information available to the world online.


We at KEY Project figured it would be good plan to get on board with this, one because its going to be awesome, two because we have a brand new computer lab waiting to be put to use with something like this, and three because we know there are hundreds of people in our community just waiting to get a chance to participate in something like this. 


So for those who want a good time volunteering serving your nation and culture and meeting new people come down and join us.

Super Sucker Limu Clean-Up!

Volunteers do work in the bay. The barge where the bags were stored is seen in the back, and the barge for the Super Sucker generators is to the left

One super sucker, dozens of volunteers, a few good leaders, and a great vision equals one bay 16,000 lbs. lighter.


Volunteers from the community collaborated with the Oahu Aquatic Invasive Species Super Sucker team on saturday to remove invasive algae from the beloved Kaneohe Bay. I was lucky to be one of those volunteers.

A sign marks the entrance to the fish pond

A volunteer hand bags some algae 

As team leader Tristan explained: 




We target Smothering Seaweed, Gorilla Ogo, and Prickly Seaweed using a combination of mechanical removal and biological control to combat the spreading problem throughout the bay.  This algae has been growing in large, tumbleweed mats, breaking free, fragmenting themselves, and reestablishing elsewhere for decades.  The resulting spread around the bay is killing coral and destroying fish habitat. 




We labored for about two hours outside the Paepae o' He'eia Fishpond in shallow waters, removing the algae. The set-up was great and we finished up an hour earlier than expected when we ran out of bags. The process is simple: you walk out a ways into the shallow water until you start to feel little algae lurkers creeping on your legs, and then you reach down and yank them out of the water with a rake, wolverine claws, or just the bare hands your mother gave you. The algae just kind of slides out out of the salty water.

Tristan congratulates all involved and informs us that we will be finishing an hour early because all the bags are full

This guy is happy

These make shift tools nicknamed wolverine claws, are designed to drag algae out of the bay

 Then you have two choices, you either pack it into a bag until your bag gets full, at which point you hand it off to a designate kayaker, or (if your lucky) you get to hand it off to a team member that will load it into the Super Sucker, an ultra-awesome ocean vacuum cleaner with a zealous vendetta against all invasive plant species. The Super Sucker will suck the algae up and pass it through generator-powered hoses to the team's main barge, where it will then be bagged. 

A kayak is unloaded onto the barge

A volunteer from Colorado adds another bag

A kayaker designated to haul the forty pound bags to the barge takes on one more bag

The kayakers took on some heavy loads, thats for sure

The Super Sucker works wonders when the numbers are few, but this time around the volunteers in the water out numbered those bagging on the barge, so although we started off feeding the algae through the Sucker, all of us ended up just hand bagging, and still the work went remarkably quickly, bagging 16,000 lbs in two hours. The algae (probably not all of it) was donated to local farmer Charlie Reppun.


This was the first community project of this sort, but judging by the success, it's likely that we will be seeing more projects of a similar nature in the future. 

Many gentlemen came and volunteered from Hui Wa'a Kaukahi, "Hawai'i's oldest and largest recreational kayak club"

Volunteers enjoy a little lunch. Of course they fed us afterwards

A team member sports the wolverine claw

Kipuka Spring Intersession

 This week elementary aged students from our community will participate in KEY Project's Kipuka Cultural Heritage Program. A spring intersession program, Kipuka involves the kids in a wide variety of activities and learning experiences like the Hula lessons shown below.

Children follow along in KEY Project's pavilion

Mary, the instructor, loves working with the kids

People's Open Market

We visited the People's Open Market on early Saturday morning. This is a slideshow of what we saw.

Formed in 1973, the market is quite a bit different from other farmers' market and is notorious for its brief hourly stay in different parts of town to service the people with cheap quality produce.

New chairs for our computer lab

New chairs came in for our thriving computer lab, Thursday. They came in by delivery from Fisher, a great place to get whatever kind of office supplies and support you need; as their website tells us: they "have it all!"

The chairs are a very safe gray, with no armrests and minimal spinny-knob things. We thought about getting the uber-cool medicine ball chairs, but those thoughts didn't last long. We'll leave toning up our abs for HOT HULA.

NEW! Hot Hula

Sheila leads group in the first of many Hot Hula classes at KEY Project

Sheila Rich shook her feet and moved her feet to lead the class in the new dance workout craze, Hot Hula.  A group of about ten showed up for the first of many Hot Hula classes lead by Sheila at KEY Project, Tuesday.

Participants following along and loving the dance moves

Hot Hula Fitness got its start in the summer of 2009 as it was sponsored by 24 Hour Fitness at the years IDEA World Fitness Conference, after Anna-Rita Sloss started the company by suggestion of her friends. Since then it has grown to encompass more than 400 classes a week and over 300 instructors world-wide. Hot Hula "isolates your larger muscle groups, increasing strength and definition to your core with specific emphasis on the abs, glutes, quads and arms.  Inspired by the dances of the Pacific Islands." It "incorporates easy to perform dance movements set to the sounds of traditional Polynesian drum beats fused with funky Reggae music, resulting in a modern, hip fitness workout," good for all ages that increases family well-fare, and can burn off as much as "900 calories" in a single workout. 


The all women class learned the easy dance moves quick and followed sheila has their heart-rate increased and the beat grew faster. A wide variety of ages were represented and many of the participants wore pareus to spice things up.  


Come try it out! Classes are every Tuesday in the KEY Project Pavilion at 7pm, 5 dollars a class; Adults, male and female, are welcome, and the best part is – the next class is free. Wear something light and cool, and then, just show up. 

We'll see you there. 

Changes in Food Distribution Program

KEY Project implemented some long awaited changes, and announced more changes for the future at our bimonthly Ohana Produce program.

The changes accompanied the merging of the both the HCAP and KEY food distributions into one streamlined program. The changes affected two groups involved: clients and volunteers. 

Clients: will now register once at the HCAP office, on a day other than that of the distribution, for both of the distributions. At 2pm registered clients will begin to draw numbers to decide line order, they will be given green numbers. Also unregistered clients will begin to sign in to pick up food on a first come first serve basis and will be given white numbers. Once all the green numbers are called, the white numbers will be called. 

Volunteers: will register and complete the volunteer training provided by KEY Project and HCAP staff. They will provide service from 1pm to 430pm. Volunteers will not go through the food line, however they will be allowed to have a designated person go through for them. They are also asked to check in the day before and we thank them for treating everybody with love and respect. 

That being said, the foodbank was awesome, and all went well, and the all had their heart warmed by the loving fire of service, even amidst these somewhat damp
times.