Holiday Giving

December 2020 – 2021 will be here in the blink of an eye. Please remember Hawai‘i Nature Center in your year-end philanthropic giving. As we wind down from Christmas and head into January, it’s been 10 months of life in the reality of COVID-19. Yet HNC’s staff and Board of Directors have many reasons to be optimistic and thankful.

Since reopening in June, 24 weeks of Nature Adventure Camp and Outdoor EDventure Days connected 760 keiki on O‘ahu and Maui to nature. In these programs, students spent 15,686 fewer hours on a computer. Instead, they explored nearby forests and streams, studied the lifecycles of the monarch butterfly, welcomed three new resident chickens as part of our Backyard Sustainably unit and socialized safely while developing new friends.

Perhaps the most important metric that is not highlighted above is the number ZERO. HNC has had no reported cases of COVID-19. We invested in personal protective equipment, added hand-washing stations, trained staff and implemented social distancing and mask wearing. All of these actions, coupled with smaller group size, play an important role in our continued success.

However, operating at a reduced level with safety as the highest priority impacts our numbers, specifically our income. Even with the development of new programs to address community needs, we continue to experience lost revenue streams because of lower enrollment, canceled school programs and the slow return of community programming.

Simply put, we need your support. Your generous gift allows us to provide quality educational programs, develop new curriculum, purchase educational resources and support keiki from underserved communities with the opportunity to explore nature.