Aloha!
In 2022 our garden site reverted back to St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Kekaha. The Kuleana Curriculum, will be the new anchor of our education efforts, allowing us to focus more resources on sharing fresh, organically grown from our network of home gardeners to food banks and food distributors serving west Kaua‘i.
Many thanks to all, and to St. Paul's Episcopal Church for many years of hosting the garden!
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Background:
Since 2009 Kekaha Community Garden has explored many ways to bring healthy produce and gardening education to working families in our west Kaua‘i community.
In 2017 westside working families from our native Hawaiian, former plantation and immigrant communities asked for more home-based approaches to growing food. We learned that they wanted to garden at home with their keiki and future generations. And that they were interested in trying new vegetables, fruits and herbs.
For parents often working two or more jobs and faced with other caretaking and family responsibilities, getting to a community garden site with their keiki to grow food was difficult. Our senior population was also becoming less mobile and preferred to garden at home on a small scale.
In response, in we began providing home-based, customized education, a home-based raised bed program, irrigation assistance, as well as seedlings and produce donated by our islandwide network of farmer friends.
In 2022 we launched The Kuleana Curriculum, an online learning tool designed for local families and those beyond our westside community, particularly Hawaiian homesteaders. We continue to share healthy food by facilitating delivery of produce from our network of home gardeners and small family farms to islandwide distribution sites.