Ripples for Education

It’s a cliché, but it’s true that you really never know what will happen when you drop a tiny pebble into a pond.

Since Richard first heard that Keaukaha Elementary School didn’t have enough money to take its students on field trips, and set up the Adopt-a-Class program to send the students to Hilo’s ‘Imiloa Astronomy Center, the ripples have been getting bigger and bigger.

The community stepped up to that call, and paid for buses and admission fees so that Keaukaha kids got to take some amazing field trips this school year.

Ka‘iu Kimura, Assistant Director of ‘Imiloa, says that the Adopt-a-Class program has taken off beyond just Keaukaha now. “Some of our members at  ‘Imiloa have adopted other classes now,” she says. “It’s the coconut wireless. People have called and asked, ‘How can we sponsor Pa‘auilo School,’ for instance. It’s infectious.”

And then Gordon and Betty Moore got involved. Gordon was co-founder of Intel Corporation, and he and his wife now divide their time between the San Francisco Bay Area and the Big Island.

Kimura says they’d visited ‘Imiloa (“under the radar; they don’t like recognition”) and liked what they saw. One of their people contacted ‘Imiloa and heard about Richard Ha and the Adopt-a-Class program.

He invited ‘Imiloa to submit a proposal to the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to expand the program so that 50 percent of all school students on the Big Island could visit ‘Imiloa.

They did. It was accepted.

And then, ripple ripple, Kimura says that when ‘Imiloa sought bids for buses to transport the students – the biggest expense – they found that “bus companies are so willing to work with us that we think we’re going to be able to expand it from 50 to 100 percent of the students on the Big Island.”

That’s every Big Island student in public, charter and private school having the opportunity to learn about science and astronomy and native Hawaiian culture at ‘Imiloa. All because some people felt bad that students in Keaukaha didn’t have money for field trips and did something about it.

“Basically it means that for the next two years,” explains Kimura, “we will service 15,000 Big Island students in grades K through 12.”

The Moore Foundation grant has a matching requirement for the second year, so ‘Imiloa will be launching a campaign to help fund the second year soon. And ‘Imiloa is bringing in an outside evaluator in hopes of finding a way to expand the school visits beyond the two years, so it can offer them on a perpetual basis.

The Moore Foundation’s grant technician told her they are now considering having the Moore Foundation start funding kids in the San Francisco Bay Area to go to science centers near them, too.

“I just want to mahalo that core group that put together that Keaukaha opportunity,” says Kimura. “Not only the Moore Foundation, but also the local community people who really liked that idea and were willing to support schools in their own area.”

“It’s resonated out from Keaukaha to the whole island to the Bay Area,” she says. “It’s been an exciting thing to see it grow.”