Events

Instead of letting your food go to waste, Aloha Harvest collects and redistributes food to nourish and strengthen our community on Oʻahu.

33,457,152  pounds of food has been rescued since our operations began in November 1999!

Feed the Hungry

In Hawaiʻi, 48% of families are food insecure.(1) Aloha Harvest acts as a collaborator with social service agencies to supply free food to the most vulnerable members of our community.

Protect the Environment

In Hawaiʻi, 237,000 tons of food is wasted annually.(2) When dumped in landfills, food rots under anaerobic conditions, producing methane, a greenhouse gas at least 25x more potent than carbon dioxide. By diverting excess food from entering the waste stream, Aloha Harvest reduces our environmental footprint and our dependence on landfills.

On O'ahu, we incinerate our waste first and then dump the ash in a landfill. However, due to its high moisture content, burning food waste is highly inefficient since it requires more energy to process in the incinerator.

Boost the Economy

Hawaiʻi spends over $4.5 billion annually importing approximately 88% of its food, (3) making us vulnerable to events that disrupt shipping. The cost of our annual food waste comes out to about $1.025 billion annually.(2) Food rescue saves the state money and strengthens our economy in both of these areas.

From the Internet:

Joshua Cooper balances academia and advocacy focusing on international human rights law through diplomacy and direct action. He is able to persuade passionately and pressure persistently in global human rights mechanisms with intensity and intellect. Cooper is an educator with over a decade of experience teaching at numerous higher education institutions in Hawaii. He has developed curriculum in over 40 courses in political science to focus on core themes of nonviolence, ecology, human rights and social justice. Cooper has taught over 100 classes at the University of Hawaii. He teaches at summer programs with a specialty on human rights of indigenous peoples at the National University of Ireland, Galway and the School of Law at the University of the District of Columbia, Washington D.C. as well as intensive courses on emerging issues in peace and human rights at the International Training Center for Teaching Peace and Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland. He is currently the Dean of the International Human and Peoples Rights Law Program in Vienna, Austria. Cooper is a human rights advocate engaging in global and regional mechanisms guaranteeing fundamental freedoms. Cooper has participated as an official observer at United Nations meetings in both the charter and treaty bodies of the human rights machinery for over a decade. He also negotiated the recent UN Sustainable Development Goals for the 2015 development agenda. Cooper will participate in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiations in Paris in December 2015.

Aunty Blanche created Hui Mahi'ai Aina in Waimanalo to care for the community that she cares about.  

She has built an amazing community, giving the homeless a home and more importantly, a family.

Read more about the organization here: Hui Mahi'ai 'Āina – Return to Our Homeland (huimahiaiaina.org)

Intro by Jerry

Dani Moreno is the Hospice volunteer Coordinator for Bristol Hospice Hawaii. She discusses all the ways hospice clients benefit from volunteer services such as reading stories, gardening, and many other ideas. 

CHIEF REBEL (aka FOUNDER) of d"Skills

Our speaker is Hannah Grady Williams. Hannah grew up in North Carolina and was the oldest of seven homeschooled children. She started college online through College+ when she was 14, meaning she graduated from high school and college with a degree in international business at the same time. Hannah notes that she primarily taught herself by roughly grades seven and eight, although she did have outside instructors for some subject areas. She shared with me that most of her “education” came from one subject: speech and debate, where, simply by preparing for frequent competitions, she learned research, public speaking, communication, teamwork, efficiency, history, public policy, and even science. Hannah’s journey towards founding a company called d’Skills began in a blue pickup truck when her father handed her, at age 12, the phone so that she could close a deal on a piece of real estate. Now, as a 25-year-old Native Digital, Hannah is Chief Rebel at and founder of d’Skills, a VC-backed start-up shifting students from test prep to life prep. It’s a hub, perhaps, where motivated teens learn new digital skills and convert them into real-world projects, helping them leave high school with more experience and connections than most college graduates!