Mālama Honua, Kōkua Hawaiʻi

Whether they are sailing along onboard or supporting the crew from land with encouraging songs of aloha… Hōkūleʻa and her holokai are inspiring great talent to join their cause.

“For me to get invited to participate on any level, has just been a real honor. I just hope that the song inspires the navigators that are on the Worldwide Voyage now and just wanting to show them that at home here in Hawaiʻi, we so proud and just really inspired by the work that they’re doing, you know and the journey they’re taking, the courage they’re showing, so I was really singing for them. You know, as a kid, stories of the Hōkūleʻa, those are the things that you base your idea of what courage is, what’s exciting in the world, just the idea of adventure., says Mālama Honua Musician, Jack Johnson.

Jack and his wife Kim began their own mālama honua effort in 2003 when they founded the Kōkua Hawaiʻi Foundation.

“We have a lot of different programs: establishing school gardens, sending kids on fields trips out into nature or to farms, trying to connect kids to their food, just trying to be more sustainable and independent. We also work with Plastic Free Hawaiʻi, getting people to eliminate single-use plastic from their life. When you walk on any east shore in Hawaiʻi, you really start to see all that marine debris washing up. All these bottle caps and things that don’t really need to be using. And so to know that the Hōkūleʻa is taking those ideas and going outside of Hawaiʻi and going to be connecting this whole world basically this worldwide voyage, that’s an exciting aspect to me as well. And another reason I want to be involved is just to be able to spread that word,” says Johnson.