Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 1, Number 8, 1 October 1984 — OHA Grants $54,000 to Hawaiian Language Pre-School Program [ARTICLE]

OHA Grants $54,000 to Hawaiian Language Pre-School Program

Aha Punana Leo, a Hawaiian language pre-school program to be established on Oahu, Hawaii and Kauai, has been granted $54,000 by the Office of Hawaiian Affairs Board of Trustees at their first meeting in almost three months Sept. 13 on Kauai. It also marked the first meeting for new Molokai Trustee Louis Hao who was sworn in three days earlier to replace Walter Ritte. Larry Kimura of the University of Hawaii faculty is president of the Hawaiian language program whieh will have Niihau Hawaiians as its instructors. This is because Niihau is the plaee where Hawaiian is the primary tongue and it is home to most of Hawaii's younger people fluent in Hawaiian. Byron Cleeland, Hawaiian language instructor at both Kauai Community College and Kauai High School, said the entire program will be strictly Hawaiian, encompassing a totally Hawaiian environment.

Cleeland, who with OHA Trustee Moses Keale started Kauai's La Ho'oulu 'Olelo Hawai'i conference in 1980, explained that Aha Punana Leo will try to re-create the chi!dhood environments of most native speakers who were then exposed to the language. He said 20 students in eaeh school will be in such an environment and phone calls from non-Hawaiian speakers would have to be taken outside the classroom. Cleeland reported that six Niihau natives are now taking courses at KCC so that they ean become licensed to teach pre-schoolers, a requirement of the State Department of Social Services and Housing. He explained that there are plenty of fluent o!der Hawaiians but many are not interested in spending eight hours a day with pre-school youngsters. Besides, he

added, it is also difficult to find persons fluent in Hawaiian who have college degrees. The remainder of the meeting agenda dealt with approving proposals to fund other projects, personnel matters and policy questions: The board granted or approved: • $1,260 to the past summer's WaiheeKamehameha Pilot Summer Program, an OHA project, The Kamehameha Schools and Waihee School on Maui for six weeks of training in basic skills and Hawaiiana for 115 to 170 children in Grades 1-8. A complete account of this program was carried in the August issue of Ka Wai Ola.

• $3,000 to help fund the Kualoa-Heeia Eeumenieal Youth Project (KEY), providing farming training to kids 13-18. • Reinstated $40,000 of unexpended funding of Halau Likolaulani, a Waimanalo day care program. • $4,000 to help pay for Big Island rancher Sonny Kaniho's appeal of a lower court ruling in a case against the State Department of Hawaiian Home Lands. • $28,000 papaya farm loan for the Puna Hui Ohana. • $5,700 grant to the Hana District Pohaku corporation for equipment and research to establish a genealogical library for Hana area residents. • $2,500 to be added to $5,000 from other agencies for a grant to the Department of Urban and Regional Planningat the University of Hawaii. The grant is for a feasibility study on setting aside state land so people ean practice a subsistence lifestyle. The board also gave its support to Paapono O Milolii in its efforts before the State Land Use Commission to be named stewards of trails, archaeological sites and access ways on the lands of Kapua near the Big Island fishing village of Milolii.