Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 27, Number 3, 1 March 2010 — OHA staffer honored for peace-making efforts [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

OHA staffer honored for peace-making efforts

By Liza Simon Public Affairs Specialist OHA's Nalani Takushi garnered the 2010 White Lily Peaee Award for her behind-the-scenes work to promote peaee. Takushi has shown a profound eommitment to promoting peaee in Hawai'i through personal transformation grounded in the realities of everyday life, said award sponsors Soka Gakkai International, a Buddhist organization led by poet, author, educator and noted peaee activist Daisaku Ikeda. Takushi received the award on Jan. 21 at a ceremony at the headquarters of the Hawai'i Soka Gakkai affiliate on Pali Highway. "This honor means a lot, because it acknowledges not only me as an individual but my services at OHA in using culture as a powerful tool to open people's hearts to a better way

of life," said Takushi, a licensed social worker and Human Services Advocate at OHA. In 2007, Takushi worked with Soka Gakkai to successfully lobby state lawmakers to follow the United Nations' lead and officially declare every Sept. 21 Peaee Day in Hawai'i. "We are the only state to have succeeded in enacting legislation that recognizes the importance of this celebration," she said. To mark

last year's Peaee Day, Takushi helped to sponsor the Honolulu visit by Betty Williams, a 1976 Nohel Peaee Laureate who turned to peaee activism after witnessing the death of three ehildren by an out-of-control car, whose driver, an Irish Republican Army member, had been shot by British soldiers. "Betty Williams was fed up with violence and she had the courage to step up to the plate to make a difference," said Takushi, who stresses that Williams was an office clerk before becoming a peaee activist. "She was an ordinary person, but she followed her conscience and heeame a model for all of us." Takushi's work integrating culture and social work as a successful model stretches from Japan to Hawai'i. In Japan, she organized a cultural fair to better connect Japanese nationals with the country's foreign visitors. "The fair brought in hundreds of people and showed that culture helps to bridge misunderstandings and reduce conflict," she said. Closer to home, she brought the virtues of the Hawaiian healing art of lā'au lapa'au and the Japanese art of ikehana, or flower arrangement, into the therapy of patients at the Hawai'i State Hospital, where she was employed as a social worker. "I believe that people find their voice through cultural practices. That was always our ancestors' way of healing. Unfortunately, many of us have lost touch with that," said Takushi, adding that one of OHA's goals is to reconnect people with culture by "promoting native ties with land and nature." The Hawai'i Soka Gakkai affiliate is Buddhist in philosophy but nondenominational in spirit, drawing together people of diverse religious affiliations for the eommon goal of reducing eommon social ills, including gang and domestic violence, hunger and poverty. Promoting peaee is indeed the kuleana of people of all backgrounds, said Takushi: "Whether we are teachers or parents or lawmakers, when we eome together to improve the quality of life, we are all fighting for the same goal." ■

nūhou EWS

Nalani Takushi shows her While Lily Peaee Award. - Photo: Liza Simon