The 2015 Grants-in-Aid selections were finalized last week by the House Finance Committee and Senate Ways and Means Committee, which voted to award $1.2 million in capital funds to Friends of Kona Pacific Public Charter School for the construction of a community kitchen.
Friends is a nonprofit corporation, founded in 2006 as an affiliated support organization for Kona Pacific Public Charter School. Together, Friends and Kona Pacific have created critically needed economic and social development for the community via a number of educational, agricultural and Hawaiian cultural initiatives that generate 40 full-time and 25 part-time jobs and an operational budget that adds more than $2 million annually to the local economy.
The new community kitchen will be built on Friend’s 40-acre learning center above Kona Community Hospital in Kealakekua, and will house Kona Pacific’s community food service, which serves the students of Kona Pacific and other schools, and also provides critical nutritional support for hundreds of at-risk children and elders. The new kitchen will also be used by local farmers for value-added processing, the first such facility to serve West Hawaii’s agricultural community.
Kona Pacific’s WHOLE Food Service program is the only vendor of federally reimbursable meals for all of West Hawaii. Currently operated out of leased kitchen facilities, the food service operation delivers nutritional, high quality meals to 650 community members at risk for hunger and food insecurity, providing a necessary community service.
Kona Pacific is the first and only school in Hawaii to offer Universal Breakfast in the Classroom, where all students eat breakfast for free at the start of each school day. It has also been a pioneer in Farm to School, offering the only 100 percent locally sourced nutrition program in the state.
The new 3,000-square-foot kitchen facility will be furnished with kitchen equipment selected to optimize the effectiveness of the kitchen for the use of West Hawaii farmers and the produce they grow.