Mālama Kaua‘i aims to make an even bigger impact on the island’s food system in 2025

Mālama Kaua‘i is celebrating the year of 2024 as they work to strengthen the island’s food system by investing in farmers and food producers.

Founded in 2006, Mālama Kaua’i is a community-based, nonprofit organization that focuses on increasing local food production and access for Kaua‘i through economic development efforts, local partnerships and innovative programs to help feed kūpuna to keiki across the island.

In 2024, Mālama Kauaʻi invested in food producers by providing $250,000 in grants and purchased over $680,000 in food to support over 100 local farmers and producers. The nonprofit also launched its Moloaʻa ʻĀINA Center, which is a post-harvest processing facility.

The Center will serve as a food hub in partnership with Moloaʻa Irrigation Cooperative, which is a large farming cluster on Kauaʻi with 70 farms spanning more than 600 acres and will provide opportunities for food producers.

In 2024, Mālama Kauaʻi also began accepting food assistance, such as WIC and SNAP, through the food hub while also helping to bring SNAP online to other food hubs across Hawaiʻi.

To help bridge the gap between food waste and food insecurity, the nonprofit utilizes a gleaning program, Village Harvest. Volunteers harvest good produce left over from personal properties and farms and donates the food to people in need.

This program helped Mālama Kauaʻi distribute 6,000 free produce boxes and bags to those who needed them.

Mālama Kauaʻi hopes to do more as challenges and opportunities change in 2025. This year, donations to the organization will go toward:

• Growing farm-to-school efforts to help feed Kauaʻi keiki with local foods through a partnership with the Department of Education;
• Keeping the food hub and food distribution programs operating, which will better support farmers and increase food distribution to communities;
• New programming that will help provide land access to beginning farmers.

Mālama Kauaʻi plans to make 2025 better for communities and to continue creating a more secure and sustainable food system.