KAPA‘A — The Orange Embrace came to life, Saturday, at Samuel Mahelona Memorial Hospital. A Home Depot initiative, Orange Embrace is designed to promote diversity and inclusion between employees, customers and the community the company serves. Carol Curran, a part-time
KAPA‘A — The Orange Embrace came to life, Saturday, at Samuel Mahelona Memorial Hospital.
A Home Depot initiative, Orange Embrace is designed to promote diversity and inclusion between employees, customers and the community the company serves.
Carol Curran, a part-time employee at the Kaua‘i Home Depot, is that employee.
Between working, Curran, a disabled 66-year-old who has no family here, teaches children crafts and performs community service as a way of keeping busy and meeting her neighbors.
She started doing this project with children in her Puhi subdivision in 2007, and the handful she started with has now grown to about a dozen children who show up “all the time whenever they are off school,” states a release from The Home Depot.
Now, Curran consistently has a craft project the children can do when they show up at her home.
Last year, the children learned to paint the inside of glass ornaments and took them home for their own Christmas trees. During the course of the year (in which the children also made special Valentine’s Day crafts for clients at Garden Isle Health Care), they indicated they wanted to decorate a tree at a hospital.
The Orange Embrace program donated a 7’5” lighted artificial tree the children could decorate at Mahelona Hospital. The tree would be available for the hospital’s residents to enjoy for many years to come. This is the first time the Orange Embrace program touched a Kaua‘i employee and the community.
The children worked on the project for more than three months, creating 300 ornaments, 150 being designated for the Mahelona tree and the remainder being kept to decorate another tree on the island next year.
“It took many months and weeks to coordinate all of this since Carol called,” said Josie Pablo, the recreational director at Mahelona Hospital. “But it was worth it because look at how happy everyone is.”
Kaua‘i Mayor Bernard Carvalho Jr. joined the children and volunteers in singing Christmas carols along with Curran; Brian Pearson, the assistant manager of operations for the Kaua‘i Home Depot; Council members Dickie Chang and Lani Kawahara; and state Rep. Roland Sagum who had several of his relatives accompany him to the event.
“We are so grateful the kupuna allow us an opportunity to give back,” Carvalho said. “We will continue to find ways to help them for all they have done for our island.”
Pablo said the tree provided by Orange Embrace and Craft Kids is just one of several trees that will enhance the spirit of the holidays at the hospital. A tree with special outdoor ornaments has already graced the arboretum created by the Rotary Club of Hanalei Bay this summer.
“This is such a special Christmas,” Pablo said.
• Dennis Fujimoto, photographer and staff writer, can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 253) or dfujimoto@kauaipubco.com.
