EA Ecoversity Empowers Native Hawaiians

EA Ecoversity is committed to solving the need for affordable, high-quality, and culturally-driven post-secondary Education and Career Training programs designed specifically for people of Indigenous Hawaiian ancestry who lack college credentials or trade skills certifications, leaving them at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder. 

EA Ecoversity provides free post-secondary courses and hands-on career exploration and training for Native Hawaiians ages 15-30 using a research-based Education with Aloha (EA) that empowers Learners to reach their highest potentials by completing personalized learning plans validated by E-portfolios, which include Digital Badges, engaging in paid internships and learning from mentors.  

If scaled, EA Ecoversity can potentially positively change the lives of over 100,000 Native Hawaiian youth living in Hawaiʻi, and another 100,000 on the continent by empowering them to enter or create meaningful living-wage jobs.  Our culturally-driven model could also impact countless other disinvested Indigenous and minority populations.

EA Ecoversity addresses a mounting need for high-quality, culturally-driven post-secondary education and career training, designed specifically for Hawaiʻiʻs Indigenous people.

While 89 percent of Native Hawaiians over 25 years old have earned high school diplomas, 87 percent are without college degrees or have not enrolled in career training programs, compared to 42% statewide. This lack of post-secondary credentials makes it extremely hard for Hawaii’s Indigenous people to find jobs with livable wages to support the cost of living in Hawaii, 88% higher than the national average, and find affordable housing, 202% higher than the nation’s average. 

The scarcity of living waged jobs has already forced 250,000 Native Hawaiians to move to the US continent, causing a painful disconnect from Native traditions and a heavy brain drain. It has also left 15.4% of Native Hawaiians, compared to 9.5% statewide, living in poverty in our homeland, although we have employment at about the same rate as the state’s total population. Moreover, Native Hawaiians without post-secondary credentials are not only overrepresented in low-paying and frontline jobs, but also one paycheck away from homelessness.

EA Ecoversity offers free access to high-quality learning, skill-building, and career training opportunities for Indigenous Hawaiians ages 15 - 30 and prepares them for success in the workforce. We enable learners to make informed decisions about career pathways that best suit them and educate them on how to prepare for these jobs using a competency-based model for life-long learning and credentialing. EA Ecoversity also provides knowledge that Learners need in building strong foundations in their Native language and culture, and essential Life Skills like financial literacy and conflict resolutions. 

As part of the international Ecoversities Network, we assure that our Learners attain the skills to care for our planet and future generations. EA Ecoversity utilizes a research-based, personalized way of teaching and learning with aloha (care and compassion), which is at once an ancient and modern practice and assists Learners to create individualized learning plans that guide their journey over a two-year learning process. In addition to taking diverse blended and online courses, Learners engage in hands-on Career Education Training, internships, Food Sovereignty projects, and Natural Resource and Land Management Stewardships that empower them to survive in Hawaiʻi in the next decades. 

EA Ecoversity directly serves the Indigenous Hawaiian community, which experienced significant losses on all levels since first Western contact in 1778. Within 100 years, over 90 percent of the population died of introduced diseases. Moreover, the majority of Native Hawaiians lauded as having exceptional health, welfare, and a thriving economy based on traditional gift culture at contact, were not only landless but on the bottom of the socio-economic ladder in their homeland, where they have remained until today. We understand the needs of this population because we are Hawaiian, suffering from the same historical trauma as the 32 young Hawaiians currently enrolled in our program. This allows us to truly be “com-passionate.” With EA Ecoversityʻs support and start-up funding, these young entrepreneurs are currently creating incredibly innovative culturally-grounded products that hopefully will be on the market before Christmas and contribute to the sustainability of EA Ecoversity so that we can continue to offer free relevant culturally-driven career training. By immersing our learners hands-on in Indigenous entrepreneurship, we are preparing young Hawaiian entrepreneurs to create viable businesses, which focus not only on benefiting themselves but also their extended families, their communities, and the environment. 

EA Ecoversity aligns with multiple Challenge dimensions including “increasing access to high-quality, affordable learning, skill-building, and training opportunities for those entering the workforce, transitioning between jobs, or facing unemployment” by providing Indigenous Hawaiians with free post-secondary education and career development training that will enhance their professional skills and aptitudes and helps them find or create sustainable jobs in their communities. Our solution also aligns with “enabling learners to make informed decisions about which pathways and jobs best suit them, as well as “promoting the benefits of non-degree pathways to employment” and finally, “implementing competency-based models for life-long learning and credentialing.”

24 members, 19 full-time staff and 5 other workers.

As an inclusive Native Hawaiian owned and operated workforce development organization, EA Ecoversity purposefully maintains an Indigenous identity as we serve diverse learners of different genders and sexual orientations. EA stands for Education with Aloha. One meaning of aloha is compassion, literally meaning to suffer together. What sets us apart from other workforce development programs is that our relationship with those we serve is not a relation between those who are well and those who are suffering. It is a relationship between equals. Because we ourselves are struggling with historical trauma and racism, we can address the disparities and inequities suffered by young Native Hawaiians aiming to enter the workforce and make a difference in their lives. Moreover, by employing our Learners, we provide them with real job experiences, and empower them to direct and drive both their own learning and our organization, based on their needs and realities.

What sets EA Ecoversityʻs groundbreaking model apart from other post-secondary institutions is that it blends workforce development and higher education. Moreover, contrary to other institutions, we charge no tuition but require our learners to work for or contribute in other ways to EA Ecoversity, as they explore careers of their choice and gain real job experiences. Additionally, we provide our learners with free culturally-grounded courses, paid for by other public learners, which help them to decolonize their minds to regain sovereignty (ea), reclaim their Native identity, and re-establish a familial relationship with land to reform infrastructure in Hawaiʻi. 

Our blended, hands-on, culturally-driven curriculum focuses on: 

1. Career Exploration and Training with a special emphasis on Indigenous Entrepreneurship, 

2. Hawaiian Language and Culture, since most of our learners do not know how to speak their native language or practice native traditions, 

3. Land Stewardship since growing food and taking care of our environment is of utmost priority in our islands, as we currently rely on 90% of imported goods to sustain us,

4. Health and Life-skills, since there is more to a happy and successful life than a good job.

We are the only post-secondary program in Hawaiʻi designed through a distinctly Indigenous lens and specifically aimed to benefit native Hawaiians, especially those who are disinvested and disconnected from the economic mainstream. EA Ecoversity integrates traditional Hawaiian practices and values with the latest in educational technology to combat the inequities faced by Indigenous Hawaiians.

The core technology being developed by EA Ecoversity for this solution is a customized, Indigenous Learning Management System (I-LMS.) Once complete, this online platform will allow us to scale our program to accommodate larger groups of learners, as well as provide opportunities for culturally driven learning and career training to others not enrolled in EA Ecoversity. By providing blended online and offline learning opportunities for individuals worldwide, this I-LMS will also support EA Ecoversitiyʻs efforts to become fully sustainable, while providing free education to our learners. 

Main features of our I-LMS include high levels of gamification to assure learning is fun, linked e-portfolios and digital badges, eCommerce options, asynchronous and synchronous learning opportunities, mobile-friendly options, video conferencing, emails, messaging boards, as well as linked personal and professional learning plans. Moreover, having a bug-free I-LMS will allow for effective communication between learners, teachers, and community mentors, which enables them to engage in discussions anytime, anywhere. 

What makes our I-LMS unique is that we are designing it to be non-linear. Our I-LMS will also have an Indigenous color palette and utilize graphics and pictures created by our learners, giving it a uniquely native look. This technology will be of benefit not just to EA Ecoversity Learners but also to others who want to learn through Hawaiian optics using a platform designed for Hawaiians by Hawaiians using Hawaiian images and colors. Finally, our new technology could also be easily adapted by other Indigenous peoples who also struggle to align with Western linear approaches.

While our I-LMS is still in itʻs infancy stages, our founder has been creating and sharing virtual and online content since having her high school students create a Hawaiian oral history multimedia CD ROM in the mid-1990s. Since then Dr. Kahakalau has been at the forefront of utilizing educational technology and online education in Hawaiʻi. 

EA Ecoversity currently offers two online classes which can be accessed at www.kuakanaka.com/hoomakaukauai and www.kuakanaka.com/hoomomoahale 

PW: aloha

Both of these classes include an App, created by EA Ecoversity learners, which can be found under Resources. One class is taught by our founder and the other one by an EA Ecoversity learner, since empowering Hawaiians to become creators rather than consumers of education has been an intricate part of the unique Pedagogy of Aloha created by our founder over the past 35 years. This ancient yet modern way of teaching and learning was published in the Encyclopedia of Teacher Education 2019 (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FJYkNrKkS3ecI15Bh-cDj78um8EMM9y4/view), and has positively impacted thousands of Native Hawaiians on all islands. 

EA Ecoversity is also part of the global Ecoversities Alliance (www.ecoversities.org), reclaiming diverse knowledge, relationships, and imaginations to design new approaches to higher education. As an emerging knowledge movement, these pedagogical initiatives are rigorous in the sense that they critique the existing education systems and cultivate new practices to regenerate ecological, social, and cultural ecosystems, whilst also reflecting on the meaning of "home" as a locality and an economy. 

As a Native Hawaiian program, EA Ecoversity itself will never be able to impact millions of lives, because the total number of Native Hawaiians is only about 500,000. However, our transformational competency-based model for life-long learning and credentialing can successfully be adapted by Indigenous populations, Blacks, Latinx and other minorities around the world.  Moreover, promoting a non-degree pathway to employment will impact and transform millions of disenfranchised youth, full of creativity, compassion and potential, but currently without pathways, or job choices. 

One main goal for the next year is to create sufficient revenues from the products and services created by our Learners, so that we can continue to pay them the paycheck they are now receiving through Cares Act funding.  This goal is already in the process of being achieved through entrepreneurial projects created by the Learners.  Another goal is to establish a solid online presence that allows our Learners to showcase their accomplishments, while contributing to financial sustainability.  Our 5-year plan focuses on a bug-free fully functioning I-LMS, which will allow us to scale up, reaching not only hundreds, but thousands and perhaps tens of thousands of young Native Hawaiians.  In five years, we also want EA Ecoversity Learners to be in control of all aspects of EA Ecoversity, as they continue to grow a sustainable organization that protects the land and our native resources, advances our native language and culture, contributes to Hawaiʻi communities and serves as a model throughout the Pacific region and beyond.

Initially, our goal for our first year of operations was to serve 10 Learners. However, since EA Ecoversityʻs soft-launch in October 2020, without 1 cent in advertising, we have already enrolled 32 Learners.  As a result, being able to adequately serve all those who apply is becoming a serious challenge.  In fact, after only a little more than one month in operation, we regard growing too big, too fast as a major barrier to success, not just in the next year, but in the next five years.  Another barrier to our success is the lack of a Learning Management System (LMS). We currently use various platforms such as Zoom, Wix, Flipgrid, Kahoot, and Emails; which are  managed manually and are reaching efficiency limitations as we steadily grow in size.  While these various online programs currently serve the purpose, they are inefficient and require multiple logins, thus jeopardizing the learners experience. Unfortunately, we have neither the resources to purchase currently available LMS models costing thousands per year, nor do we believe that existing LMS models meet our needs as Indigenous peoples, One reason that our I-LMS has not advanced quicker is the lack of $25,000 charged to create an LMS of the scope desired.  Another barrier is that we have not found Native Hawaiians, or Indigenous individuals who are skilled in coding, programming and/or software development.  However, even when our I-LMS has been created, finding Native Hawaiians who can maintain and update this platform will be an ongoing barrier. 

To address our growing too big, too fast barrier and prepare ourselves for ongoing, well-managed growth, EA Ecoversityʻs leadership, in collaboration with current Learners, is exploring solutions of how to manage current and future learners.  This will be achieved by putting an extra emphasis on generating income through Learner-directed entrepreneurial projects and services, so that we can hire sufficient learners as EA Ecoversity staff to handle our workload. We plan to address the lack of an LMS by adding pages to our website, perhaps even create another website, as well as creating more mobile apps that allow learners to acquire knowledge anytime, anywhere.  With the help of organizations like MIT Solve, we hope to bring together a team of Hawaiian/Indigenous covers, programmers, software developers, graphic arts etc. from throughout the world who can contribute to our I-LMS coding team.  With your financial and other support we hope to code and launch a culturally-grounded Indigenous Learning Management System that can become a prototype for other Indigenous systems.  Procuring funding through this challenge, so that we can hire a team to code our I-LMS, would help us tremendously and address a huge barrier.  Regarding our other barrier concerning finding no qualified Native Hawaiian or Indigenous coders. This barrier could also very well be successfully addressed through this challenge, by connecting us with Hawaiian or Indigenous programmers, coders or software developers who are part of the MIT network.  Finally becoming a Morgridge partner would provide EA Ecoversity a baseline for success.

Since the beginning of time our ancestors have utilized performance-based assessments to authentic audiences to validate outcomes of learning and confirm that a learner has acquired specific aptitudes or skills.  These outcome data cannot be collected at this time, since these performance-based assessments, known as hōʻike in Hawaiian will not occur until at least two years from now, when we hope to graduate our first learners.  For the same reason we are also not yet able to collect and assess other data, including gains in  self efficacy and cultural efficacy, community impact, the social Impact of interns within Hawai’i owned businesses and other data points.  In addition, it will take a few years before we can assess EA Ecoversityʻs impact on our Learnerʻs career choices and the amount of Learners who become entrepreneurs, end up working in green jobs, the data and technology industry, or other fields.

Our team is well-positioned to deliver this solution because of the successful track record of our founder who is known for creating and administering innovative, culturally-driven education programs for over 35 years, including the first Hawaiian-focused public charter school (PK-12) known statewide as a stellar model of education.   This school obtained a full six-year WASC-HAIS Accreditation and built the first platinum LEED certified building in Hawaiʻi.  EA Ecoversityʻs structure and approach builds on these 35 years of experience in successful planning, implementation, and evaluation of Hawaiian-focused education programs.  In addition, our team members have strong business backgrounds to provide administrative support, financial tracking, reporting and marketing strategy. We also have an advisory team that is well versed in Hawaiian values and practices who are active members in the community and perpetuate the Hawaiian culture through their professions and personal lives. What makes our team even more well-positioned to deliver our solution is that our Learners are absolutely brilliant.  As young 21st century Hawaiians emerging from schools like the one created by our founder - in fact 6 of our current full-time employed interns are graduates of that school - these Learners bring with them strong cultural foundations, diverse tech skills, and a true passion to protect our natural resources. These Learners make our team dynamic and passionate, able to grow a successful workforce development program where Learners feel cared for and safe, where they have the self-determination to set their own personal and career goals and the support to achieve these goals.

We are in the process of renewing an ‘Aelike or Agreement created in 2018. The Agreement identifies each partner as a collaborator in the movement to “establish a learning community and a community of practice that works to mālama (care for) our land and people”. Each party has the responsibility of providing resources for organizational and educational purposes. The agreement also positions Kū-a-Kanaka, the fiscal sponsor of EA Ecoversity as the lead organization of this project.

To date the following cultural groups, practitioners, government and community based non-profit organizations have signed our EA Ecoversity Agreement, with a least another dozen partners waiting to sign our revised, updated version.  

Aha Aloha ʻĀina

Ecoversities Network

Hawaiʻinuiākea School of Hawaiian Knowledge

Hawaiʻi Ulu Cooperative

Hui Mālama o ke ala ʻŪlili

INPEACE The Institute of Native Pacific Education and Culture 

Kaʻala Farm 

Kaʻehu

Kamehameha Schools

Kanaeokana 

Kanu o ka ʻĀina 

Keiki o ka ʻĀina

Kokua Kalihi Valley Comprehensive Family Services 

Kua O ka Lā Charter School 

KUPU

Le Fetuao Samoan Language Center

Mana Maoli 

Maʻo Organic

Maui Food Innovation Center 

Pōhāhā i ka Lani

Sultan Ventures

Taaretu

University of Hawaiʻi West Oʻahu

Who we benefit: Native Hawaiian people ages 15-30 without college degrees or skilled trade certification

Social Impact: We offer culturally-driven courses not just to our learners but to native Hawaiian communities, families and individuals. These courses help them to connect to their native language and culture and contribute to the normalization of things Hawaiian.  In addition, we support Learners as they find their career pathway and develop new skills that will benefit not just themselves, but also their families, their communities and ka lāhui Hawaiʻi, the Hawaiian nation. 

Products/Services: EA Ecoversity offers free education and career training for Native Hawaiian youth and young adults community. We are in the process of developing software for learners to engage through distance learning so that the reach of potential users remains limitless.

Why: The lack of quality post secondary higher education and career exploration and training, that is not just affordable but free of job thanks to an innovative reciprocal business model, has caused many young Hawaiians to “sit on the couch”, without hope for the future.  These Hawaiians frequently become statistics, experiencing unemployment and poverty at an extremely high rate, factors which are linked to the disproportionate rate of suicide among young Native Hawaiians.

Ea Ecoversity is fiscally sponsored by Kū-A-Kanaka LLC, a Native Hawaiian social enterprise focusing on reconnecting Native Hawaiians to their native heritage through culturally-driven education.  As our main stream of income, Kū-A-Kanaka is in good standing to take on EA Ecoversity and help it to grow and prosper.  Within the last three years, Kū-A-Kanaka has shown exponential financial growth with an average financial growth rate of 98%. We currently have 32 learners, about half of whom are part of entrepreneurial teams that are developing products, courses, and educational tools that will generate income that will go directly towards EA Ecoversity operations. We have already created and tested MVPs for a number of Hawaiian games and educational activities and are awaiting the arrival of a Glow Forge to produce and ship them before Christmas. Moreover, we plan to expand our online Hawaiian Language and culture courses that are offered to the public for $300 per 10 week course, but free for our Learners.  Each course generates $3000. By steadily growing our course offerings each quarter, we hope to offer over 225 courses by the year of 2025.  At that time EA Ecoversity will be self-sustaining, and be able to generate our own income through various streams.  

To date we have received the following awards:

$10,000 Award from MIT 2020 Indigenous Communities Fellowship | September 29,2020

$3,000 Germinator Grant from Ecoversities Network September 16, 2020

In addition, our paid interns collectively are benefitting from over $ 50,000 of Cares Act funding that is allowing us to create multiple market ready products that we aim to utilize to generate income.

Additionally,, revenue sources are provided as needed from Kū-a-Kanaka LLC.

After leading a non-profit organization for over a decade and serving on the boards of at least five other non-profits over the past decades, our founder decided in 2010 to no longer depend on public or private grants.  This led to the creation of Kū-A-Kanaka as a social enterprise in 2017. In 2019, Kū-A-Kanaka generated an income of over $250,000 by providing quality, culturally-driven products and services.  EA Ecoversity continues this revenue-generating model of Kū-A-Kanaka.  All of the funds that we potentially receive from this challenge will be used for start-up costs, including paying for our GlowForge and financing our I-LMS.  At this time, Kū-A-Kanaka and EA Ecoversity are debt free and if at all possible, we aim to keep it that way, by marketing innovative, fun, delightful Hawaiian-focused products and services for Native Hawaiians of all ages.

Our primary expense for 2021 is roughly $25,000-$30,000 to hire a software development team to code our Indigenous Learning Management System.  Since this system will help us to generate significant revenues in the future, this will be the investment that will provide promising returns.  While most costs for EA Ecoversity will be offset by the revenues of the products and services our Learners are generating, depending on the number of Learners we plan to admit, there may be an additional 50,000 in start-up funding to make our 5-acre Outdoor Learning Laboratory in a traditional Hawaiian valley fully sustainable.

We believe that we have created a unique, highly valuable higher education, career exploration and workforce development model that truly reimagines pathways to employment in the US and is aligned perfectly with the goals of this MIT Solve challenge, as well as the goals of the Morgridge Family Foundation, which invests in leaders and organizations that reimagine solutions to some of todayʻs biggest challenges.  We also believe that MIT, with its longtime reputation as leaders in technology, would be the best partner possible, in helping us develop the technological aspect of EA Ecoversity, particularly the development of a non-linear Indigenous Learning Management system that can become a model of holistic learning.  This I-LMS we will empower the next generation of Native Hawaiians to perpetuate their native culture and traditional practices and grow Indigenous values-based economies from the ground up, which protect the environment and assure that all Learners are able to reach their highest potential.  

EA Ecoversity is more than a post-secondary institution.  It is a family of learners, or learning ʻohana that could not function without our many partners, consisting of cultural groups, organizations, businesses and individuals who are aligned with our values and can offer professional and cultural expertise to our learners.  EA Ecoversityʻs partnership goals include finding more partners that can offer technological support including Coding, Software Development, and Front-end and Back-end programming and maintenance, to help us create, maintain and continuously update an optimal functioning, fully de-bugged learning management system. We are also searching for partners with Marketing and Public Relations expertise as well as individuals, companies and nonprofits who want to provide training to our Learners or are willing to provide them with paid internship and land stewardship opportunities.

We are currently seeking a partnership with the Morgridge Family Foundation to help us create meaningful connections with others who are as interested in fostering innovation as a vehicle for systemic change as we are.  We believe that the Morgridge Family Foundation can link us to a network of diverse partners who will collectively help us to make a truly profound impact.  In addition, EA Ecoversity is currently trying to continue our partnership with the State of Hawaiʻi, to use future Cares Act funding to train our EA Ecoversity Learners in careers of their choice.  We also hope to partner with AmeriCorp, a voluntary civil society program supported by the U.S. federal government, foundations, corporations, and other donors.  Our goal is for AmeriCorps to provide funding so that our EA Ecoverisy Learners can engages in public service work with a goal of "helping others and meeting critical needs in the community."  We would also like to expand our partnership with MIT and MIT Solve and access their incredible technology knowledge and expertise as we create the first Indigenous Learning Management System