Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 25, Number 7, 1 July 2008 — Alu Like program offers practical help for former paʻahao [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Alu Like program offers practical help for former paʻahao

Even though she travels across town to start her shift at a loeal supennarket at 3 a.m., Cannelita Maldonado is thrilled to be back at work. "I have a federal prison record, so I really have to get out there and sell myself to employers. I am honest and tell people where I've been and I just ask for a ehanee to prove myself." Maldonado, the youngest of 12 children from Hawaiian homestead land, walks the talk of a good work ethic, as evidenced by the way she has put together an original booklet of help-lines and social service agencies to benefit other former pa'ahao. Still, after serving a 26-month sentence for drug-related charges, she was disappointed when the only job she landed was in a retail store that stuck her on the loading dock to do heavy lifting. She kept searching and finally got some mueh needed direction from the ex-offender program at Alu Like Ine., whieh provides Native Hawaiians and other indigenous groups with life-skills support. This ean range from resumewriting help to ho'oponopono with family members. It's allimportant to a former prisoner, said Maldonado. "You walk out of the detention center with only the

clothes on your back, no money, no medical and no home. Why do you think so many ex-felons just give up, go back to the streets and end up back in jail? There's programs (inside prison), but they just reinforce this feeling of being a loser," she said. At Alu Like, she said, program manager Lovey Slater seemed to really understand that many exprisoners don't want a handout: "I had always been the Monnny who did everything for others. I had a job driving Handi-Van and I provided for my family." She said she got involved with selling drugs, because she thought the fast money would help her family. Now she feels bad when she passes homeless people, figuring her crime only made the eonununity worse. "The day I was caught, I secretly felt relief." Aunty Lovey reminds her to move on by asking: "Okay, honey, what are you going to do for yourself?" At Lovey's urging, Maldonado has put together a plan and is considering returning to school for job training that will bump up her low wage. She looks back and wonders j why so many hard-working Hawaiians like herself end up ī in prison. "I mentally accepted this while I was on the inside,

because if you start to question too mueh, you will go crazy." But now she does what she ean to encourage those who share her ethnicity to eheek out the Alu Like ex-offender program, because the people there seem to understand that ex-pa'ahao are normal and hard-working - with one major difference perhaps in the way they are appreciative of every little opportunity, she said, sharing this surprising example: "Onee at a prison release program, we got caught outside in the rain. We were laughing and crying because it felt so good just to be standing there - outside." For information on the Alu Like Ine., Ex-Offender

Program, go to www.alu like.org. ^

Carmelita Mūldonado. - Photo: Liza Simon