OHA Soliciting Bids for Native Hawaiian Outreach Programs, $250,000 Available

By Sonia Isotov

The Office of Hawaiian Affairs is seeking bids from non-profit organizations capable of providing services to improve family income levels, raise educational achievement levels and improve health conditions among Native Hawaiians in the state.

The Community Partners program has up to $250,000 per year in grants and is available to organizations to not only spearhead efforts that support these advocacy initiatives, but also have a measurable effect on any of these three priorities. Funding for this effort is available for up to two years, starting Dec. 1, 2011.

 “The effort represents a new dimension to OHA’s approach to engaging community-based organizations to assist the Native Hawaiian community in addressing needs in education, health and family income,” said OHA Chief Executive Officer Clyde W. Nämu‘o. “We have shifted our focus from serving individual needs to applying our resources to programs and activities that will lead to systemic change and maximize our impact on all Hawaiians.”

OHA has issued a solicitation for proposals seeking partners in the community to assist with three advocacy initiatives. They are:

• Raising  family-income levels to help foster economic self sufficiency;
• Meeting or exceeding educational achievement standards for  elementary, intermediate and high school students as well as increasing college graduation rates;
• Reducing health risks by decreasing the obesity rate among Native Hawaiians.

The deadline for Letters of Interest is 4:00 p.m. Monday, June 6, 2011, and should be sent to the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, 711 Kapi‘olani Blvd., Suite 500, Honolulu, Hawaii, 96813. For more information about the Community Partners proposal, visit www.oha.org.