POIPU — Mayor Derek S.K. Kawakami encouraged everyone to help the Kauai United Way make its goal of $625,000 Thursday during the 2019 campaign launch done over lunch at the Grand Hyatt Kauai Resort &Spa.
Kawakami, delivering the keynote address to the audience of several hundred people, said he learned life lessons growing up carefree in the 1980s.
“I was working in a grocery store,” he said. “The person who bags your groceries and the person who rings you up teach you the greatest lessons.”
During his tenure in the grocery business, Kawakami encountered firsthand the issues of poverty.
“It was close to closing at 11 p.m. (also the cutoff for liquor sales on Kauai),” Kawakami said. “There was a lady who was clearly uncomfortable with being in line with her cart of groceries, ahead of several other customers who toted packs of beer.”
He encouraged her onward, and during the checkout process, saw something that changed his life.
“It touched my heart,” Kawakami said. “My friend’s mother was
scratching for change at the bottom of her bag while in her mind, she was trying to decide which of the items she would have to put back because she didn’t have enough money.”
Kawakami said these items were grocery items needed to care for her family.
“There are many people like her,” the mayor said. “There are the kids who use their parents’ food stamps to try and buy things not allowed by food stamps, or those kids who shoplift for items as simple as pencils because they need it for school. I encourage everyone to support the Kauai United Way because, each year, there are more and more people like my friend’s mom.”
Kauai United Way, led by Executive Director Scott Giarman, is an independent nonprofit dedicated to serving the social service needs of Kauai through its umbrella of more than two dozen agencies.
Giarman said while contemplating the 2019 goal, he thought about the state of the economy and why we in Hawaii are spared from the worst.
“It is because of aloha and how we get along together,” Giarman said. “Aloha is the sense that we have enough to share, and Kauai’s people help the Kauai United Way to unite people in helping the people who need help.”
Patrick Ono, Matson Kauai District manager, was greeted with a standing ovation led by Giarman, Ron Wiley, event emcee and KUW board president, and Timothy Takeshita of Enterprise Rent-A-Car, this year’s campaign chair, when Ono presented a $10,000 contribution from Matson.
“OK people,” Wiley said. “Now, we just need to come up with $615,000.”
