Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 39, Number 3, 1 Malaki 2022 — A Council's Commitment to the Power of Community Authority [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

A Council's Commitment to the Power of Community Authority

V 'AHA HO'ONA'AUAO 'OIWI HAWAI'I V > NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION COUNCIL *

By Elena Farden Just like advocacy, our work for the eommunity never stops. In December 2021, the Native Hawaiian Education Council (NHEC) conciuded our year-long community work and documentation of priority recommendations to the U.S. Department of Education. This work is both our charge (ESSA, Title VI, Part B, NHEA, Sec. 6204(D)(6)) and our joyful work as a eouneil. How We Started We started early in the year with eommunity consultations across all our island eommunities from Hilo to Hanalei. We work with passionate, trusted, and artful gathers of our community, such as 'A'ali'i Allianee, to create inclusive and intentional spaces for diverse community engagement. We support and lean into the values our eouneil members. They attend every community consultation as a key touchpoint between our work and the community through the guiding values of: • Connection. We learn with and within a community, and thus we explore opportunities to identify connections between our individual observations and our collective experiences. • Challenges. We hold ourselves accountable to a culture of learning, and critical reflection of our own questions, ideas, and/ or biases that ean play an important role to test what we know - or don't know - and help us seek evidence towards deeper understanding together. • Contextualization. We see and respond to the world through an 'Oiwi lens, and thus are both diverse and equal partners with our community in making sense of our work that is appropriate, meaningful,

and equitable. What We're Learning With mana'o and qualitative data provided through 18 community sessions and 118 eommunity members across the pae aina, 'A'ali'i Allianee and our eouneil worked to synthesize the data to identify major themes and patterns. These themes were reviewed with current literature in education and eommunity wellbeing, and weighed against criteria from our NHEC needs assessment. The result was two sets of priority recommendations to the U.S. Department of Education: priority recommendations for funding and priority recommendations for grantee support. Our full 2021 annual report with priority recommendations will be made available digitally this month on our website at www.nhee. org. Where We're Going Next NHEC, with 'A'ali'i Allianee, has already begun our 2022 community consultation series focused on building stronger eommunities. Our sessions started in January and we have ample opportunities for the community to engage through March and April. All our community consultations are ffee to attend and open to all. To register or find dates for your specific community, please see our events page at www.nhec.org or on our NHEC Facebook page. We need you, your voice, and your priorities there as equal partners with us in this effort for Native Hawaiian education. Pūpūkahi i holomua! ■ Elena Farden serves as the executive director for the Native Hawaiian Education Council, established in 1994 under the Native Hawaiian Education Act, with responsibility for coordinating, assessing, recommending and reporting on the effectiveness ofeducationalprogratnsfor Native Hawaiians and improvements that may be made to existingprograms,policies, andprocedures to improve the educational attainment ofNative Hawaiians. Elena is a first-generation college graduate with a BS in telecommunications from Pepperdine University, an MBA from Chaminade University and is now in her first year ofa doctorate program.