Building a Five‑Year Plan for a More Food‑Secure Hawaiʻi Island
Community Food Security Project
The Community Food Security Project is a multi‑year initiative led by The Food Basket to develop a Five‑Year Community Food Security Plan for Hawaiʻi Island. The plan is being shaped by the people who live, grow, cook, teach, and share food here.
Food insecurity on our island is a complex story. It runs through household kitchens, school gardens, community harvests, kūpuna care networks, and the land itself. No single program can solve it.
Lasting change requires a plan that reflects the full picture: one built with community voices at the center, and backed by the resources to act on what we hear.
Our Approach
We are listening first. Across Hawaiʻi Island, the project team is gathering community input through interviews, surveys, listening sessions, and action planning summits. We partner with organizations already rooted in the communities they serve so participation feels trusted and accessible, and we provide facilitation support, stipends, and translation so every voice can be part of the conversation.
What we learn is shaping a plan grounded in four pillars:
Nutrition and Cooking Education: Supporting culturally rooted, practical skills that help families feed themselves well.
Nutrition Access: Strengthening the pathways that connect people to fresh, affordable, local food.
Subsistence and Sharing Networks: Honoring and investing in the traditional practices of growing, gathering, fishing, hunting, and sharing that have long sustained Hawaiʻi Island communities.
Gardening Education: Expanding hands‑on garden learning in schools and community spaces
Investing in Community‑Led Solutions
Alongside planning, the project is funding action.
Through a competitive grant program, funds have been awarded to organizations across Hawaiʻi Island, ranging from rural homestead gardens to faith‑based food pantries to cultural food systems projects.
These grants put resources directly in the hands of the people already doing the work, so lessons from the field feed back into the plan and into the communities it serves.
The Five‑Year Community Food Security Plan will be completed through continued community engagement, synthesis of what we have heard, and collaboration with island partners. Our goal is a plan that is both honest about the scale of the challenge and practical enough to drive real change. It will be a living document that belongs to Hawaiʻi Island.
This project is made possible by funding from the County of Hawaiʻi through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).
What Comes Next
