Lahaina News: Holiday hope, kindness and food

LAHAINA — As we prepare to celebrate Christmas and move into the New Year, we are reminded of the grassroots community project Hungry Homeless Heroes Hawaii (HHHH) that began in Lahaina and is now island-wide.

While living on the West Side, co-founder Brad Kukral, in the midst of the pandemic, witnessed a homeless man get into trouble while trying to obtain food from a local grocery store.

“This incident was the impetus of the project,” he explained. “The man was hungry and just wanted to eat, and was begging for help. So, the next day, my friend Steven Calkins and I decided to cook and distribute meals. The operation increased literally overnight from 15 meals on the first night of our new program to 100 meals within a week. The operation grew overnight, literally!”

HHHH uses quality excess food to fill the stomachs and hearts of Maui’s hungry rather than the landfills. Kukral and Calkins set up a food redistribution organization that receives food from community members and farms with surplus, besides growing their own food at Napili Community Garden on the West Side and Anuhea Chapel in Pukalani.

Additionally, they have put together an all-volunteer team who garden, prepare nourishing meals and personally deliver them to the unsheltered on the West Side and throughout Maui.

Kukral continued, “The pandemic impacted the unsheltered community in its own unique way in terms of limited restroom facilities, the inability to comply with stay-at-home orders and difficulties obtaining food. Through a Facebook network on Maui, we were able to collect donations and supplies. As the program grew, so did the area of response. Volunteers and donations rolled in from a variety of area businesses, organizations and private citizens. During the pandemic, we delivered an estimated 2,900 meals to Lahaina, Paia, Kahului, Wailuku and Kihei over the course of 20 days.

Currently, the program can produce as many as 250 to 300 meals a day. However, a main ingredient that the homeless need is the feeling of not being abandoned. Kindness is as appreciated as food.

“HHHH works with compassion to bring hope to the hopeless,” Calkins said. “Giving comfort and joy, as well as food, to the unsheltered is extremely important to us. Loving kindness gives a much-needed impetus to have the courage to succeed and get back into the world, relearning job and life skills. Hope is the string that pulls faith and love. So, we try to serve hope and kindness along with the meal.”

HHHH often coordinates with Maui Rescue Mission (MRM), which offers showers and access to washers and dryers for clothes. MRM can often be found parked at Lahaina Baptist Church. The church has also been a major source of food and comfort for the unemployed, hungry and unsheltered in the West Side community.

Also, HHHH is grateful to Napili Community Garden for allowing them to grow produce for the project on a small plot of land, and to Napili Farmers Market for giving food donations for meals.

“Our future vision would be to take another step toward a permanent solution by galvanizing the community around this most dire issue facing the unsheltered,” Calkins explained. “Ideally, we would like to find a self-sustaining property where families could come on a work-trade basis. In the meantime, HHHH’s purpose is to feed the hungry with hope, one meal at a time. The staff have been mindful of sustainability and work to create an environment that recognizes, validates and enhances the dignity of everyone experiencing homelessness. We are aware that HHHH is a community effort to feed Maui and bring hope and joy throughout the holiday season and beyond. Mahalo to all those volunteers in the community who bring comfort, kindness, and food to those in need.”