VOLUME 5 • ISSUE 2 • June 2025

Honoka‘a Hongwanji’s Food Outreach Program Gets a Helping Hand

State, national and local groups honor the small Hawai‘i temple with grants totaling $53,000

BY CATHERINE TARLETON
SPECIAL TO KA LEO KĀHEA

For more than six years, Honoka‘a Hongwanji Mission has been feeding people every Friday out of their compact kitchen under the temple through its Peace Committee program.

To date, some 97,000-plus meals have been delivered or served to the small multi-ethnic community on the north side of Hawai‘i Island, thanks to the efforts of dozens of dedicated, enthusiastic, tireless and organized volunteers.

Up until now, several charitable groups have privately made donations to support Feeding Our Keiki and Kupuna including Honpa Hongwanji Mission of Hawai‘i, the Hawai‘i Community Foundation, the Kohala Center, Marin County Foundation, Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church, the United Methodist Church of Honoka‘a, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the W.M. Keck Observatory.

This year, all of that is about to change: In June of 2024, AARP Hawai‘i awarded the program one of its Community Challenge Grants in the amount of $11,970 as part of their Livable Communities Initiative.

Hawai‘i’s Atherton Family Foundation awarded the program $30,000; the County of Hawai‘i announced $10,000 largely through the efforts of council member Heather Kimball, and Honpa Hongwanji’s Social Concerns Committee continued its commitment to the program with another $1,000 award as it has done for several years.

Since 2020, the Social Concerns Committee has awarded $6,000 to the program.

With only an hour or two to spare, volunteers bag apples and tomatoes from boxes delivered by the Food Basket. From left, Susie Tamashiro, 15-year-old Yuji Ino, 17-year-old Kaylee Rodrigues, Terra Freeman and Steve Schwalenberg. Typical of the “new Sangha,” no one, with the exception of Yuji, is a dues-paying member of Honokaʻa Hongwanji, but simply volunteer, practicing Dana.

Prior to serving the public, Plating Crew leader Erik Burkhardt, left, checks out a sample meal assembled by Paul Zivalic, center, overseen by volunteer Doris Miller.

Photos courtesy of the Honoka‘a Hongwanji Peace Committee

In addition, Honoka’a Peace Committee Chairman Miles Okumura and his wife, Lynn Higashi, were named AARP’s 2024 Andrus Award recipients which comes with a $1,000 donation.

“We were in Minnesota when we heard about the award,” he said, “so we went to AARP presentations at the statewide meetings in Honolulu and Hilo. “Many people have reached out to congratulate us. It’s humbling.”

The award honors AARP founder and educator Dr. Ethel Percy Andrus who once said, “It is only in the giving of oneself to others that we truly live.”

Lenley Lewis, a Laupāhoehoe resident who nominated Okumura and Higashi, said the Feeding Our Keiki and Kupuna Program follows AARP’s mission of empowering people to choose how they live as they age, not only by reducing grocery bills in a state where food costs can be 60% higher than on the mainland, but also by enabling elders to better thrive at home through its program of volunteer meal and grocery delivery to local seniors.

“Not to mention enabling volunteers to stay active and to use their talents and experience in new ways,” Lewis said.

Funds from both the AARP and Atherton Family Foundation grants will support the weekly service as well as begin some much-needed kitchen repairs and upgrades.

The County of Hawai‘i funds will also address the kitchen and pantry needs but go toward freeing infrastructure and overhead costs including utilities, appliances, repairs and office expenses.

Each week, more than 400 warm meals are prepared and 1.5 tons of groceries are packed and delivered to 225 households.

“Every week different teams tackle the program, step by step,” Okumura said.

“They receive food deliveries on Wednesday, set up grocery bags on Thursday and pack them on Friday, prep the food, plate and distribute meals, plus four different teams handle home deliveries, and then clean up on Friday evening.

“It’s quite a production, and those 45 to 50 volunteers, from teenagers to kupuna, take their part seriously, and show up every single week, rain or shine, on holidays too.”

What started out as a community cooking class for children six years ago expanded into the weekly hot meal-and-grocery bag service before the pandemic spiked in March, 2020 and the need for food for quarantined families expanded drastically.

For Okumura, Higashi and community activist Ravi Singh, the idea of feeding the community was a dream based on “langar,” a Sikh tradition that provides a free community meal to all regardless of faith, one’s ability to pay or ethnicity.

During Covid-19, Singh’s home temple in India served more than a million meals in one month.

From the beginning, professional chefs have stepped up to help as well.

Chef Sandy Barr-Rivera, former executive chef at Merriman’s Waimea and a culinary instructor at Hawai‘i Community College, leads the prep crew and supervises preparation for some dishes.

Jim MacKenzie, previously with 3660 On the Rise on Honolulu’s Waianae Avenue, has become a regular chef on Fridays.

Working in the temple’s small kitchen, the chefs have displayed extraordinary creativity as they increased meal production from 50 to nearly 600 each week.

Singh himself is known for enthusiastically preparing his popular vegan and vegetarian Indian fare.

Community members regularly donate money and items such as eggs, fruits and vegetables from their farms and gardens, paper bags and egg cartons to assist with packaging, even children’s books are gratefully accepted.

Although they have worked closely with the Food Basket and Kokua Harvest, Feeding Our Keiki and Kupuna also accepts produce and donations from local farmers, wholesale grocery and produce providers and more than 200 different volunteers.

New volunteers are invited to join their ranks and help reach their 10th year anniversary.

In February, Honoka‘a opened its Social Hall to the community for a celebration of the program’s sixth anniversary and to wish mahalo to Rev. Masanari Yamagishi before he returned to Japan to pursue a career as a hospital chaplain, with a focus on large scale emergencies and natural disasters.

Monetary donations to the program may be made online at www.honokaahongwanjibuddhisttemple. org or by mailing checks made out to “The Peace Committee” to Honoka‘a Hongwanji; P.O. Box 1667, Honoka‘a, HI 96727.

For more information, contact misterokumura@yahoo.com, or call (808) 640- 4602.