Marya Mann : Blog : AWEsome Solutions To Childhood Hunger

AWEsome Solutions to Childhood Hunger

The way individuals and organizations have come together on this project is AWE-inspiring.

Joy, the joyful art teacher at Kalani Honua, is putting together a Puna ArtWavEs (AWE) event in July for us to bring healthy food, banner painting, arts enrichment and life-care skills to children and families who have been depleted by the magma flows from Kilauea Volcano. South Kona Education and Arts is hosting two days of yoga and silk-painting workshops in South Kona. Later in the year, we visit two more schools, a festival and more locations, bringing the Blessing Banners to life!

Please consider helping us now to buy materials, fuel, food and cover educator fees. When I got involved in this mission to end childhood hunger three years ago, I started as a volunteer yogi offering mindbody centering skills and dance at a summer arts camp for homeless keiki. I saw that the children needed so much more, mainly fresh foods.

I got involved because I just had to do something. It’s been such a painful process, with outpourings of beautiful support from all around the Pacific Rim and yet we felt we were making only small inroads. Your support has helped us deliver 2000 meals and so much more. But we want to eradicate the roots of child hunger, not only its symptoms.

Giving food and yoga and dance lessons to children isn’t enough if their basic vitality is being depleted by hunger for the basics of hygiene, self-esteem, hope for a better future and technical skills to create that meaningful future.

One in five children in the U. S. are hungry for food. Two in five have no idea what they are living for. Three in five have given up hope of our planet surviving more than 20 years from now. Why is this?

We have the resources to re-energize and re-distribute energy in a way that infuses our family of humanity with new waves of AWE-some blessings.

Living in Hawaii, I thought at one time, would be like living in paradise. I could teach yoga, see clients, make art and write books. I see now that paradise is, and always has been, a state of mind.

Being part of a community where there is so much beauty and wealth side-by-side with soul-searing pain and poverty is not exactly the paradise we hope for. Even in the tropical air among mango-heavy trees, poverty looms and children suffer through no fault of their own. As in too many places around the world, the gap between haves and have-nots widens, and it changes us.

Rather than focusing on what’s wrong, we at Feed the Children focus on bringing things back into balance. That’s the way of the healer, teacher, yogi and passionate social activist. That’s the way of the artist, shaman, prayer-giver, kahuna and philosopher. We choose to reward kindness, excellence and goodness and contribute to the wider beauty and prosperity of all.

You can sense there’s a great need people have to express themselves, and they’re finding words, the pictures and the events to do it. This is and always has been a wonderful place. My town. Your town. Our town. Our Earth.

What is unique about Hawaii Island is first the felt aloha. There is a potential for harmony in the blend of Eastern and Western cultures, like two points on a double-hulled canoe, but these two worldviews are not always moving in the same direction. Like our left and right brains, we can’t always put everything in motion toward the common higher good.

Making Blessing Banners as prayer flags to spread aloha around the world and aim us toward a common vsion? Can this really help our ailing world? Can we Feed the Children and refuel an aloha-deficit world?

Why not?

“It’s not often that you see a group focused on a process like this,” says Randyl Rupar, our sponsor at Sanctuary of Mana Ke’a Gardens. “This is one of the most effective projects I’ve seen to guide our youth to appreciate the meaningful things – healthy food, community and the arts, and also give them technical skills for long-term life enrichment.”

Including the whole population of our island in our concept of wholesome food, families and life-giving arts is our way of reversing childhood hunger at home and sending those ArtWavEs through the Blessing Banners to nourish others around the world.

We can do this, with your help. Please support this effort to help children, contribute to social and global health and bring more beauty to the world. Please contribute now.

Big Beautiful Blessing Banners!
Marya
For Feed the Children and ArtWaveS