LIHU‘E — This past week, Hawai‘i, the nation and the world witnessed a historical mark in our nation’s history with the inauguration of Hawai‘i-born President Barack Obama who became the leader of the world’s largest economy. The president, Sens. Daniel
LIHU‘E — This past week, Hawai‘i, the nation and the world witnessed a historical mark in our nation’s history with the inauguration of Hawai‘i-born President Barack Obama who became the leader of the world’s largest economy.
The president, Sens. Daniel Inouye and Daniel Akaka, and Kaua‘i-born General Eric Shinseki brought Hawai‘i to center stage and demonstrated the diversity, strength and possibilities of our democracy if we’re willing to work hard and contribute to our society where these values are demonstrated everyday and passed on from one generation to another.
President Obama’s inaugural speech, which was a call to the American people to take responsibility, ownership and active engagement in the process of helping move our country move forward, reminded me of the importance of what we must do everyday as we enjoy our freedoms that we sometimes take for granted.
While we are also constantly reminded of the economy throughout the media, our opportunity as residents is to remember the lessons learned from Kaua‘i’s recent history: Hurricanes Iwa and Iniki, the SARS Asian Epidemic, the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, and 9/11. Our state and island have enjoyed several years of economic success that at times puts us at odds within our community about the economic benefits of tourism versus competing with the island’s rural architecture and quality of life.
The lesson I observed when I lived on O‘ahu during the previous crises, was that the people of Kaua‘i are resilient, have a very strong sense of community and share values of Aloha that resonate throughout the community in times of crisis.
Once again, President Obama asks us as Kaua‘i residents to move into action on those small and big things we can do in the meantime to help support and stimulate our local economy while he and his cabinet, Gov. Lingle, Mayor Carvalho and members of the legislature figure out what they can do to help with the economic stabilization efforts.
How can we as people of Kaua‘i do this?
First, maintain a positive attitude, rely on your familiar social, business and community networks and ‘ohana, stay focused, remain realistic about your current situation and instill confidence. Confidence because that will provide the sense of hope we’re all looking for.
How do I see us as translating that into action?
As I previously stated: buy local, eat local, drink local, take responsibility and step up and help each other.
While meeting with legislators this past week, county officials, Kaua‘i Chamber of Commerce members, and business leaders of the Kaua‘i Business Council, it was agreed that we need to take responsibility and help the process of fixing our economy by each person doing what we can to support our local businesses from the retail sector to farming and, especially, Hawai‘i’s number one industry, tourism.
Now is a great time for you to help promote Kaua‘i by inviting and telling your family, friends, business associates, college classmates, and others off island to come to Kaua‘i and take advantage of the lower airfares (interisland and U.S. Mainland), hotel packages and visitor attraction activities and events (www.kauaidiscovery.com).
This is definitely one of the free opportunities to help promote Kaua‘i when the tourism marketing dollars are becoming less and less. Inviting them to come to Kaua‘i will help your family member, neighbor on the street, co-worker to maintain and have a job, and help to reduce our ever-growing unemployment rate which now stands at 6.5 percent.
As the president of the United States and our state and county government leaders have said, let’s each do our part to help our country regain its foothold as the world’s leading economy and therefore help lead the world out of this global recession.
Here’s your opportunity to help lead by promoting Kaua‘i and moving out of this economy to a better and sustainable one. For more information, visit www.kauaichamber.org
• Randy Francisco is president of the Kaua‘i Chamber of Commerce. He can be reached at randall@kauaichamber.org
