Kim & Jack Johnson join us from the newly established Kōkua Learning Farm, a seven acre farm established as a learning laboratory for local youth groups which allows Hawaiian plants and traditions to flourish.
How Does a Learning Farm Benefit Community?
Humans are born with a natural curiosity about the world – it’s what drives our spirit of innovation, wonder, and creativity among many other wonderful traits. Providing a space for people of all ages to learn, share, grow and experiment safely with nature helps build a more sustainable community, share knowledge across generations, and come together. When a community has a shared space to grow together, it provides not only a space for seeds to take root, but ideas too.
Paula and Jack’s love of community is helping to build a learning farm which will help inspire the next generation of community members by providing a space to learn about plants, and people too. Bringing people together, from artists and musicians, to farmers, teachers and everyone in-between, The Kōkua Hawaii Foundation (along with Jack Johnson and Paula Fuga) hope you will help donate everything from seedlings to trees. Click here to make a donation directly.
A Living, Breathing, Learning Farm
Over the last few hundred years, agricultural education has transformed drastically to keep pace with technological . In the mid 1800’s, the United States Government (a colonizing force) expanded it’s program of forcibly taking large amounts of land from native communities and re-appropriating them to serve the needs of industry and government. The turn of the 20th century marked a shift in the natural ecosystem of Hawaii and many other lands which continues to present day. By providing affected communities with a space to connect around agriculture, these communities have a chance to retain the living knowledge about the land and create a future that embraces local, sustainable agriculture.
The Kōkua Learning Farm features spaces to help explore a variety of plant species and environments. From wetlands to fields of fruit trees, the farm provides the space for learning about sustainability. Your donation can support a specialized area of the farm, or be used to generally support sustainability overall. Learn about what Paula, Jack and all the friends at the Kōkua Hawaii Foundation are doing to improve sustainability and build better communities.
Constructing Native Wetlands helps filter run-off from Haleʻiwa town as it flows onto the farm. It will be full of native wetland plants like ʻahuʻawa, ʻakaʻakai, makaloa and more which will help attract more native birds and insects as well.
Native trees will live throughout the property but especially in our Hawaiian Garden area. The hope is that with the establishment of more native trees, the farm will see more native wildlife come to the Haleʻiwa ecosystem and help people of all ages learn about the cultural significance and uses of these native trees and plants.
Help support the farm’s ability to purchase seeds which farm interns will propagate into seedlings to plant. As the seedlings grow, the farm will grow with them and share the food they produce with our community.