Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 6, Number 3, 1 March 1989 — Revolving Loan Fund [ARTICLE]

Revolving Loan Fund

In September 1988, OHA received news of its biggest grant award yet. OHA was granted nearly $1 million from the Administration for Native Americans to administer the Native Hawaiian Revolving Loan Fund demonstration project (NHRLF). Over the next two years, OHA will

apply for a continuation of this grant with an additional $ 1 million eaeh year for a total of $3 million . This money is being used to make business loans to Hawaiians. As is its practice, OHA is matching the federal money. This time, OHA is funding all administrative cost so that all of the federal grant money ean be used for business loans. As of January 1, the new Native Hawaiian Revolving Loan Fund Office officially opened, with a full staff and a new phone number, 944-6571. The project manager is Chester Cabral, the two loan officers are Dennis Chong and Ken Sato, and the NHRLF secretary is Merlyn Akuna. The staff is busy deveioping all the policies, procedures, and loan applieahon forms. These will need to be approved by the Commissioner of the Administration for Native Americans before we ean proceed to make loans. The work is on schedule and we are expecting the application forms to be ready in April as previously announced. This project has attracted a lot of attention. So far, OHA has received about 500 inquiries from potential loan applicants. Everyone who calls is added to the NHRLF computerized mailing list and they will automatically receive information about the program directly through the mail. For example, a notice will be mailed when the applieation forms are available. Unfortunately, rumors about this project abound. The loan fund staff frequently receives calls from people who say they heard that the money has already been given out, or that the loan application forms are already available, or that no loans will be given out this year. None of these are true. No applieahon forms have been distributed and no loans have been made yet. Like everyone else, the NHRLF staff is eager to get loan processing underway.