By: Kainoa Casco

First, mahalo to my family. Mahalo to my wife for all of her strength, love, support, and patience in being the best life partner. And mahalo to my two keiki for being the amazing little people that they are. They give me the greatest joy in life. 

Mahalo to all of those who supported our hometown of Lahaina over the past year or two that continues to this day. Without all of the support, I wouldn’t have been in the right place to have gone on this journey. 

Mahalo to the Omidyar family and team for their support in making Hawaiʻi a better place. And mahalo to my work, partners, friends, and colleagues who supported me on my journey through the program. 

Mahalo to all the people, spaces, and places in Aotearoa who welcomed me with aloha. My life is forever changed and we are now forever reconnected. 

My impact experience took me to Aotearoa where the hope was to build connections and return to Hawaiʻi to help reimagine how to revitalize our large portions of unproductive lands in Hawaiʻi to build prosperity for our people, environment, and local culture. I am hopeful that I was able to accomplish what I set out to do. I was blessed to have connected with some of the most amazing people and special places. There are too many of them to list in this short summary and be able to do them all justice.

So many unforgettable stories were shared, connections made, and lessons learned. Some of these include new models for affordable housing that may work in Hawaiʻi, successful approaches to regenerative and indigenous-owned tourism, systems for biosecurity and conservation, community-based agroforestry models, integrated agriculture and housing, and the list goes on. 

Additionally, I am grateful to have learned the following gifts of hope and wisdom that were graciously shared with me:

• Let’s raise all of our peoples up across the Pacific at the same time by reconnecting, staying connected, and sharing our wisdom together. And do so in a way where we all rise at the same time without anyone or peoples being left behind.
• Mokopuna Decisions - Let’s consider a long-term, intergenerational view. Let’s make mokopuna decisions, so we can create mokopuna solutions which lead to mokopuna realities.
• Mana-Enhancing Ways - Let’s do things in ways that enhance people’s mana, including when hard decisions or discussions need to occur. 
• Let’s move forward by remembering our kūpuna, culture, history, and values but also understand that we need to look forward and adapt to the current world we live in. We are dealing with aspects of life that our kūpuna didn’t have to deal with environmentally, economically, culturally, politically, etc. so we need to remain true to our kūpuna and culture but also progress through new ways of thinking, doing, and seeing the world. 
• Let’s be open to being present and being open to new experiences, unplanned occurrences, new ways of thinking, and being a little uncomfortable. There were too many times to remember how things worked out better when I didn’t plan them and just let it happen. 

I’m forever grateful to all those I connected with in Aotearoa and will carry forward all that was shared. I’m confident that through our continued efforts to reconnect and share that we can all help each other rise up and build better mokopuna realities. 

Mahalo. Mahalo. Mahalo.