Food and food systems are extremely complex. They impact how we live, our health, and our wellbeing. Our current systems and the single program and strategy approaches from the top are not working. To make food systems that truly encourage healthy communities and healthy people, they need to reflect what communities need and want. Our approach is to focus on building relationships and partnerships. Leaders share, collaborate and work together to create local food networks that are effective for their communities. We knit these local community networks into a larger statewide network as a “network of networks” and Alliance to raise community voice to effect changes that matter at the greater systems level with the aim of giving everyone in Hawaii an opportunity to have a healthy and fulfilling life.

Our goal in the long-term is that our ʻāina is healthy, our food system is healthy, and our people are healthy. Our food connects us to our grandparents, to our spirit, to our culture, to our stories, to our environment. So if weʻre interested in our children growing up in a healthy food system, we have to invest in it.