Tag Archive for: In the news

Lahaina News: Holiday hope, kindness and food

/in /by

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.”

 

Holiday hope, kindness and food

Maui News: Hungry Heroes Hawaii Making a difference, one meal at a time

/in /by

Steve Calkins and Brad Kukral are the co-founders of Hungry Homeless Heroes Hawaii, a new nonprofit on Maui.

Just after the stay-at-home order began islandwide, the two were walking down Front Street in Lahaina.

“It was a ghost town,” said Calkins. Both felt there was a visible yet indiscernible need for those without shelter or food.

The following day, Kukral visited a supermarket. He witnessed a man running from the store with a shopping cart filled with his belongings. A store employee ran behind him, eventually catching up and grabbing the two bags of beef jerky the man had stolen from the store.

“It couldn’t have been more than $15,” said Kukral. The man with the cart then broke down, pleading and begging with the store worker, telling him he was hungry and hadn’t eaten in days.

“No one was really paying attention,” said Kukral.

He pulled into a parking spot nearby and continued to watch from a distance. A construction worker, who was also on the scene, stepped in and began yelling at the homeless man. He proceeded to take the man’s cart and empty it’s contents onto the street. People continued to walk by, no one doing anything. A few strangers muttered and audibly snickered passing by.

Kukral had seen enough. He proceeded into the store and bought the man a bento box. Giving it to him, he said, “I don’t really condone stealing. But I understand what you’re going through.”

He knew that he would have to do something about it. That night Calkins and Kukral began brainstorming.

“We decided we could cook some meals,” they said.

They posted the initiative to the Facebook group, Maui Helping Maui. The response was immediate. Donations began pouring in from the Maui community with offers of rice, pasta, beans — all kinds of food.

“If someone is going to donate something to us, we’re gonna use it,” said Kukral.

What humbly began as just a few meals, all prepared in Kukral’s one-room apartment, grew daily as it caught the attention of others who wanted to help. With the online network that Maui Helping Maui gave the growing team of volunteers, Kukral and Calkins connected with other community heroes like Aaron Fung, owner of Blue Moon Cafe in Kihei. Fung graciously donated his space and licensed kitchen, which gave a central location for Hungry Homeless Heroes to continue to prepare meals. His kitchen offered a perfect temporary solution. What started as a way to feed the hungry on the west side, grew rapidly with more drivers, more cooks and more helping heroes.

Declining to have their photo taken, Calkins’ said the real heroes are the people they feed every day. Right now, Hungry Homeless Heroes is serving between 350 and 450 people a night, according to Calkins.

Their clients are the most vulnerable. Based on the latest study released by the County of Maui, there are roughly 1,300 to 1,400 people living without shelter on the island. It would be safe to assume those numbers are actually considerably higher, and the vulnerable population has grown exponentially with the current economic climate.

Calkins and Kukral prove that individuals can really make a difference in the lives of many. Human kindness that can make the difference in someone’s life is sometimes served one meal at a time.

Hungry Homeless Heroes is accepting monetary gifts, food and man-hour donations.

Hungry Homeless Heroes

Maui Now: Meals Delivered to Homeless On Maui

/in /by

Hungry Homeless Heroes Hawai‘i: 2,900 Meals Delivered to Homeless on Maui

By Wendy Osher

A homegrown effort to get food into the hands of homeless individuals on Maui is gaining momentum, with an estimated 2,900 meals delivered to Pāʻia, Lahaina, Kahului, Wailuku and Kīhei over the course of 20 days.

Steven Calkins and his friend Brad Kukral made 15 meals on the first night of their operation out of food from home, and drove around Lahaina looking for unsheltered homeless who were hungry. As the program grew, the two used donations to buy supplies and food from Costco.

Today, the Hungry Homeless Heroes Hawaiʻi program is pumping out 250 to 300 meals a day, is operating out of a commercial kitchen in Kīhei, and is utilizing the help of about 30 volunteers to cook, garden and deliver meals directly into the hands of those in need.

Maui Now Homeless Heroes
Maui Now Homeless Heroes

The impetus of the project was when Kukral witnessed a homeless man get in trouble while trying to get food at an area grocery store. “He was hungry and just wanted to eat, and was begging for help,” said Calkins of his friend’s encounter. “So the next day we decided to cook meals and went around Lahiana … and the operation literally increased overnight.”

“We always knew there was a big homeless community,” said Calkins, noting that the pandemic has 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 in obtaining food.

Through a Facebook network on Maui, the two friends were able to collect donations and supplies, and within a week they were cooking about 100 meals a day for the Lahaina community.

As the program grew, so too did the area of response with about 50 meals each now going to Kīhei and Pāʻia; 100 meals being distributed in the Wailuku/Kahului area; and the remaining meals going to Lahaina.

Over the past three weeks, donations have also rolled in from a variety of area business including 185 bento box meals on Friday from the Grand Wailea and 120 chili and rice plates from an anonymous island restaurant on Saturday.

Recent kitchen cooked meals also featured cheese and veggie frittatas with Portuguese chorizo fried rice, salad, bread and a cookie. Earlier in the week, another island business donated “Bolognese Sauce all pepped/cooked and ready to serve.” That meal was paired with elbow noodles, a green salad, bread and a banana bread muffin.

ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW AD
On Monday the friends and volunteers began prepping meals using a commercial kitchen donated for use by Blue Moon Cafe in Kīhei.

According to Calkins, a number of community organizations also reached out and worked with the newly formed group to provide information on clusters where deliveries would help . This networking includes groups like Maui Rapid Response, Maui Mission Control and Chili on Wheels that provide food, water, first aid and hygiene supplies during the day.

Calkins said the Hungry Homeless Heroes Hawaiʻi program aims to get all food out of the cafe by 3:30 to 4 p.m. so volunteers can deliver during daylight before sunset, and help fulfill needs for the homeless as the day winds down.

In addition to work in the kitchen, Calkins has also been getting help form the Nāpili Community Garden, where a small pot of land is being used to grow produce for the project. “We’re hoping that in a couple of months we can become more self-sustained through our own work,” said Calkins.

The operation has been mindful of sustainability in the process and has been using compostable containers with chopsticks instead of plastic utensils. “The biggest hurdle is trying to get them fresh water without using plastic water bottles,” said Calkins. “We’ve only been giving plastic water bottles to those that really, really need it, and trying to get aluminum or tin bottles donated so we can just drive around with a five gallon jug and refill as needed.”

While the first few nights was paid for out of pocket, Calkins said, “We were amazed at how fast it caught traction in the community.” Now, he said, the main out-of-pocket expense is on gas. “Other than that, ever since we moved into the cafe, we’re getting produce, onions, potatoes… We can’t take credit for it. It’s definitely a community effort. We’re the first ones to admit that. Everyone has been chipping,” said Calkins.

The name Hungry Homeless Heroes Hawaiʻi is the official name of the program. “We are not referring to us. We want to make it clear,” said Calkins. “The heroes at the end of this story are the homeless who will help each other rehabilitate and get back into a working environment. That is our main objective. This is just phase one,” said Calkins who hopes to eventually start integrating those receiving meals into the solution.

In an ideal world, Calkins said, the program would operate like a soup kitchen, run by the homeless community in which meals would be offered to those in need; while the kitchen environment would provide a starting point for individuals who need references to get back into the working world.

“They beg me to help out in this process. They want to go back to work and feel that self-worth that they belong to something and are doing something good,” said Calkins. “We really perceive them as the super hero.”

For more information visit Hungry Homeless Heroes Hawaii on Facebook.

Hungry Homeless Heroes Hawai‘i: 2,900 Meals Delivered to Homeless on Maui