North Kohala Community Harvest Hawaii Project Initiated

Community Harvest Hawaii takes an idea intrinsic in Hawaiian culture - that of preparing and sharing food together - and creates a process that makes use of food that is currently going to waste in our community.

During a monthly “Community Harvest” day, community members are invited to bring their abundance from home - lemons, limes, tangerines, avocados, mangos, banana, etc.- to the Kohala Intergenerational Center to be processed. Local experts will be on hand to help facilitate the processing and preserving of the food, including freezing, canning, pickling, smoking, fermenting and dehydrating. The community will then enjoy a feast, everyone gets to take food home, and raw and processed food will be distributed to the community through the Food Basket and the Senior Nutrition Program. Local harvest teams will also be available to harvest fruit for Kupuna or other community members who would like assistance with harvesting and are willing to share their excess with the community.

The goals of the Community Harvest Hawaii project are to:

• Increase the health of communities by distributing fresh, local food.
• Increase the skill level in the community with regards to food preparation and food preservation techniques (smoke, pickle, can, freeze, ferment, and dehydrate).
• Strengthen the community through cooperative food preparation in a fun, multi-ethnic, learning environment.
• Examine the potential for economic opportunity through development of value-added products.

North Kohala’s Community Harvest Hawaii project was one of five projects chosen from more than 180 applicants for an Island Innovation Fund Grant through the Hawai’i Community Foundation. Community Harvest Hawaii is a partnership between the North Kohala Eat Locally Grown Campaign, Ka Hana No‘eau, and Ho‘ea Agricultural Park, with support from the North Kohala Community Resource Center.

To participate in the project please visit www.eatlocalhi.org or call Andrea Dean at 960-3727.