MEO’s 60th Anniversary: Assisting residents on Lānaʻi

The 60-year-old Maui Economic Opportunity is the only Community Action Agency in the state that assists residents on multiple islands, including Lānaʻi.

As MEO celebrates its birth on March 22, 1965, the poverty fighting CAA, one of four in Hawai‘i, this week highlights current programs and the history of supporting people in need on Lānaʻi.

MEO has offices in Kaunakakai, Hāna and Lānaʻi City. These offices operate most of MEO’s 30 programs, including rental, utility, employment, food surplus distribution and transportation.

MEO Lānaʻi at 1144 Ilima Ave., No. 102, assisted 281 residents in 2023-24. The three-person office is led by Rose Jane Ancheta, a Lānaʻi High graduate, who joined MEO as branch manager in 2022. She has a background in health care on the island and serves as MEO’s community liaison, identifying the island’s needs.

MEO’s second executive director, Joseph Souki, in the late 1960s and early 1970s identified child care as a major need on Lānaʻi and opened Lānaʻi Day Care for 3 and 4 year olds. Paul Pladera, the third executive director, set up a Head Start program on the island.

But as other options emerged MEO gradually ceded the responsibility for child care to other organizations. This is part of MEO’s way: identify a need, develop programs to tackle it and give way and not compete for resources when others provide the same service.

When MEO was born, the island’s main industry was pineapple, and MEO supported farmworkers. Dole/Castle & Cooke shut down pineapple operations in 1992 amid increasing international competition, and MEO was there to assist workers during the difficult transition of the island’s economy to tourism.

In the Lānaʻi Community Plan drafted in 2015, MEO is cited several times, charged with developing entrepreneurship with training and loans and workforce development education and providing transportation.

Ownership of the vast majority of the island shifted to Oracle’s Larry Ellison in 2012, and MEO has been working and coordinating with his Pulama Lānaʻi team to assist residents.

Transportation, rent and utility assistance and food surplus distribution are the mainstays of MEO Lānaʻi. MEO buses take residents to health and dialysis appointments, to the airport and the harbor and other events and activities.

In the late 2010s, MEO began operating a shopping shuttle to Maui for residents due to the limited options on Lānaʻi. MEO arranges for bus transport to Mānele Small Boat Harbor, ferry service on Expeditions, bus transport on Maui and back – for 10 residents at no cost.  Since the wildfires, the Lānaʻi Shopping Shuttle operates through Māʻalaea Small Boat Harbor and transports residents to Costco, Walmart, Queen Ka‘ahumanu Center, banks and other destinations.

MEO’s Hāna and Lānaʻi branches often work together to get youth to sporting events and other home-and-home activities.

“Lānaʻi is part of the MEO ‘ohana,” said MEO CEO Debbie Cabebe. “We look forward to continuing to fulfill the needs of residents, hopefully for another 60 years.”

For more information about MEO’s Lānaʻi office, call 808-565-6665.