Foundation receives $40K grant to help share Lahaina’s historic heritage

The Lahaina Restoration Foundation has received a $40,000 grant from the Rotary District 5000 Foundation to support efforts to preserve and share Lahaina’s history.

“We are very grateful to Rotary D5000 Foundation for their grant of $40,000 which has enabled us to develop three alternative ways to reach the community with Lahaina’s important stories” stated Theo Morrison, Lahaina Restoration Foundation’s executive director.

The Foundation has created a series of exhibitions and programs highlighting stories of Lahaina.

In partnership with cultural organizations, local schools and community businesses, the foundation will open a new Lahaina History Museum. 

This month, the Alexander & Baldwin Sugar Museum hosted the Lahaina Fire Archive exhibit for the West Maui students who visited the museum. 

Objects, oral histories, photographs, poems and art from the community-sourced archive are on display.

In June, the exhibition will be relocated to kiosks at the Lahaina Cannery Mall and will be publicly visible during mall hours and is also available online at lahainafirearchive.omeka.net

In the spring, Lahaina Restoration Foundation also launched a virtual reality school program featuring its film “E Ho‘i Ka Nani i Mokuʻula – Let the Glory Return to Mokuʻula.”

Students viewed the film together using VR headsets, with versions available in both ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi and English. The full program included an introductory history lesson about Moku’ula, a viewing of the film, followed by a discussion.

The funding provided by Rotary reflects a spirit of unity among Rotarians, who have come together to aid the Lahaina community in their recovery journey.

Rotary District 5000 includes approximately 1,500 members across 47 clubs on Oʻahu, Maui, Kauaʻi and Hawaiʻi Island, and is part of a global network of 1.4 million Rotarians dedicated to creating lasting change.

There are nine Rotary clubs on Maui. For more information about these clubs, contact Maui Island Resource Chair Joanne Laird at mamalrd01@gmail.com.