Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 22, Number 5, 1 May 2005 — OHA is an advocate reaching out to communities [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

OHA is an advocate reaching out to communities

Aloha and happy Mother's Day to all the mothers and all the dads acting like mothers, and all the grandparents doing the mothering thing again! I am sending out my congratulations! At the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, the trustees and staff and all the volunteers working on all the islands are working hard trying to reach out to the communities. OHA is tasked with the responsibility of "advocating" for the Hawaiian beneficiaries. So what is advocating? The dictionary says: "to support or urge." Sometimes OHA ean urge too

mueh, and we want to know when that is happening and what we should do about it. Sometimes OHA thinks we are supporting, but puhlie statistics show the Hawaiian community still at the bottom of progress, and we want to know what we should do about that. I like to think our staff and volunteers are turning out good things, but the Hawaiian communities are the best to judge our actions. So, it must be that the Hawaiian community agrees generally with what we are doing, otherwise we would be getting a lot more feedback. I don't remember ever hearing

about the Board of Trustees visiting 'Ewa Beach, but we will be in your community in May. The trustees are planning to visit the Big Island on Nov. 30 and Dec. 1 (if nothing happens). There are so many issues I would like to share with the trustees and plan site visits for on the Big Island, but it would be helpful if the community would provide insight on what is most pressing in our communities. OHA is considering stuff like sending the Native Hawaiian Historic Preservation Council to Lāna'i for a workshop on kuleana lands on that island. We still send the

Hawaiian Registry and the Kau Inoa programs all over the continental U.S. and to any of your community meetings, cultural events and family reunions. We are still encouraging the use of the Grants Program, the Micro-Loan Program, scholarships and the Native Hawaiian Revolving Loan Lund for businesses. We still encourage the use of over 100 federal laws that provide benefits like education and health. And we want to hear from you. Aloha.

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Linda Dela Cruz

Trustee, Hawai'i