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What We Stand For: Taking Climate Action Everyday

November 18, 2019

As part of the Impact Hub Global network, we have a shared vision for a better future for all. Recently, we made it official as a network to make sure we were accountable to our commitment. We’ve written before about our commitment to social impact, and about our commitment to sustainable development as guided by the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

 

sustainable development goals

Many in the network are deeply inspired by the current swell of climate action happening around the world, and thus global Impact Hub teams have committed to taking their climate action even further by committing to a new What We Stand For proclamation. This agreement gives guiding principles for how we can take climate action each day in our respective locations.

From the collective document, these are the commitments that network leaders have agreed to: 

  • Leveraging the power of our 16,000+ network of changemakers to showcase what is already being done, raise awareness and serve as inspiration for what can be done more.
  • Continue working towards less waste every day, and adding to our efforts of reducing our environmental footprint by having at least one #zerowaste day per month in our Impact Hubs, no matter what activities we are running.
  • We put the planet first by reflecting on how our operations are run, and whenever possible and available, we switch to more climate-friendly practices (reducing food waste, changing to renewable energy sources, avoid single-use plastic, etc.).
  • We share best practices and support each other in making those options available to others.
  • We commit to making conscious and environmental choices when traveling and always offsetting our carbon footprint when journeying to meet in person.

Dozens of other Impact Hub communities around the world committed to this including: Impact Hub Dresden, Yerevan, Hamburg, Budapest, Milano, Belgrade, Donostia, Torino, Prague, Brno, Ostrava, Bern, Tegucigalpa, Leipzig, Florence
Stuttgart, Bergen, Berlin, Trento, Bucharest, Amsterdam, Lisbon, San José, Phnom Penh, Málaga, Curitiba, Madrid, Ottawa, King’s Cross, and in the United States, Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Houston and Honolulu!

How can we implement some of these ideas in Honolulu?

Showcase What’s Being Done

We love to highlight our Member organizations and community groups that are striving for climate action, and by offering our space to those groups for events and membership, like Nicole Chatterson of Zero Waste Oahu, and other member organizations like Surfrider Oahu, Sustainable Coastlines Hawaii, and social impact organizations like Puuhonua o Waianae, Work Now Hawaii, ChangeWorks, FarmLink Hawaii, and more. We also host and promote events focused on climate action throughout the year.

Host a #zerowaste day per month

We are committed to reducing our waste in as many ways as possible. You may have seen the Bokashi bucket near the rubbish bins: this natural compost solution helps us reduce about 20 pounds of food waste each week. We have a collection of zero-waste solutions, like our kombucha, nitro coffee, and  beer on tap, along with reusable containers for meals and bags for shopping. We also require all event hosts to offer sustainable options (or use our kitchen items) for events. We have a strict policy about single use plastic water bottles, and they are not allowed at events. We are always seeking active solutions to reducing paper and other waste streams.

Put the planet first

Last year we swapped all lights for LED lights for lower energy use, and we have recently upgraded to ecobee thermostats making our temperature regulation more responsive, and thus more energy efficient.

Share best practices

We are active in the Impact Hub global community and seek to share our successes with our fellow members and support each other in making those options available to others.

Making conscious choices for travel

We do not yet have an active policy about this, but seems like now is the time to create it!

We are always open to suggestions from members and the community about how we can be a better local and global corporate citizen – so tell us – what commitments would you like us to take on to further our climate action?

ImpactART 2019 Featuring Aria Villafranca- Vox: A World without Humanity

November 11, 2019

We are excited to announce our fourth ImpactART event featuring artist and illustrator, Aria Villafranca, December 5, 2019.

For details and to RSVP to the event, please click here. The event will be held December 5, 2019, starting at 6pm. The opening is free, and drinks and pupu will be provided. Find more work by Aria on her website, on Facebook, and Instagram.

If you spend any time here at Impact Hub HNL, you’ll likely recognize Aria’s work, which adorns the pillars in the Queen Street side of the space. The scenes are from a sci-fi cityscape and it was some of the first work to color our walls, so it’s really exciting to host this event that features a more full body of work from this multi- talented artist.

Aria, born and raised on Oahu, received a BFA from the University of Hawai’i at Manoa, and is currently working towards an MFA in Sequential Art at the Savannah College of Art and Design.

In this coming show, which features comic book-style sequences, standalone pieces, and animations, Aria invites us to examine the familiar through an unfamiliar lens. This alien world has been created for the viewer to enter, fully examine, inhabit, and interact with this new world to escape reality to enter a world of fiction. See selected images from the show in the Gallery below:

EPSON MFP image

I chatted with Aria about her work for the show and to learn more about the motivation behind some of this work.

Andrea Bertoli (AB): Where does your inspiration come from for all the different worlds you create?

Aria Villafranca (AV): Whenever I create a world for any of my stories, there’s both a visual inspiration and a thematic inspiration. One can come before the other, but they both work together to shape the world. It’s hard to pinpoint a hard and fast “rule” when it comes to creating, because I usually build up these worlds over a long period of time, so the process is slightly different for each work. I like to keep it organic though, and I usually compound ideas as I think of them.

Visual inspirations often come from reality, or at least ideas from other media that are informed by reality. For “Vox,” my visual inspiration comes from cities, and the idea of cities. I’ve always had an interest in cities and urban architecture, so I wonder if my exploration of cities via this work is my way of vicariously experiencing life in an urban space, since most of my time is spent in smaller communities. What time I have spent in cities has really resonated with me, and the visuals and feelings I keep from those experiences heavily influence “Vox.”

What has struck me about these places is the juxtaposition of different perceptions that one can have of them. When you see advertisements for these places, they are very polished, very flashy and inviting; but when you get there, there are a lot of parts that are dirty, that have trash in the streets, dilapidated storefronts, graffiti on bus stops, and other darker sides of urban living. These aspects of “the city” are not advertised, particularly, but they are there as part of the reality of city living. In the interest of money and tourism, many people would like to pretend that these less than pleasant aspects of a city’s image is non-existent, and it’s for that reason I am inspired to utilize these aspects.

And honestly, I just think that the actual messy reality of a city is much more interesting to exist in and be a part of. It feels lived in, it has character, and that really appeals to me to not have the world exist as a pristine Stepford Wives-esque utopia as seen in advertisements.

I’m also pretty influenced by other forms of media that thematically tie into the “mood” I’m going for in my work. Music is a big part of how I conceptualize ideas, so there are a few hip-hop and electronic music artists that convey the grit and grime I’m portraying in “Vox”, like Run the Jewels and Foreign Beggars. Then there are shows (The Wire, Futurama), films (Blade Runner 2049, Dredd), comics (Blacksad, The Spire, V for Vendetta), a bunch of non-fiction books and articles, and of course, the news.

In these depictions from other media, there are aspects that speak to me, that I then translate into my own world. There’s the bombastic violence and glamour that Run the Jewels raps about, the zany alien culture of “Futurama,” the repetitive and looming structures of “Blade Runner,” the cameras and police of “V for Vendetta.” These themselves are inspired by reality, starting a game of telephone between what exists, what is depicted, and what is predicted, in the culture of these real and imagined spaces.

There are just so many aspects from so many different things that influence and inspire me at different intervals that contribute to this stew that then becomes this world. It’s a process.

AB: What do you think viewers can learn from living – at least temporarily- in this fictional/fantasy worlds?

AV: I think that by entering a fictional world the viewer can remove inhibitions when it comes to thinking about certain ideas. In the real world, we can often be guarded and stubborn when it comes to issues we care about. My theory is that, when experiencing a fictional situation, you are more likely to take it at face value, without preconceived notions, and you become more open to contemplating an idea you perhaps would not have in reality if someone just presented it to you, even though the core concept is the same.

The way I see it is fiction can be used as another way to explain a point of view. It’s like if you’ve ever been in a discussion, and you didn’t understand a concept, and someone used a metaphor and it suddenly made sense; that’s what fiction (and fictional worlds) have the potential to be, if that’s the artist’s desire.

In each fictional world I create, and their corresponding narratives, my intent is to tackle specific issues that I feel are worth talking about. In “Vox,” I hope that by reframing situations we face in the modern age, viewers can understand the absurdity, tragedy, and danger we face in the current socio-political moment that we are living in.

AB: In your artist statement, you write about dealing with ‘made up conflicts to forget real problems–’ so do you envision your work as a kind of self-reflective therapy?

AV: I was actually being playfully sardonic there; weird as it is to say about a story with no humans in it, my work is rooted in reality, so in the narrative sense, it really is only about real problems. While I am speaking to issues I care about in society, I am also trying to entertain the viewer to some degree (otherwise I could just be writing academic essays). The irony is that, in a lot of works that are explicitly or implicitly making statements on contemporary issues, because the work itself is so engaging and, for lack of a better word, fun, viewers can… miss the point.

I think it’s perfectly feasible that a viewer can forget real problems by being entertained by made up conflicts that are themselves commentaries on real problems. But this is also the double-edged sword of creating art as entertainment, balancing the line of being too overt or too subtle with your intentions. It’s also not up to me to determine what someone takes away from the art; as long as they take something away, I’m happy, but there is also a specific intention that I have when I’m creating something.

Creating the work is therapeutic for me, because I feel that I am contributing, at least in a small way, to the discourse surrounding important issues. Explorations of poverty, race, class, law, and power are interesting to me and necessary; whether the viewer themselves also finds this therapeutic is probably up for debate. I hope, though, that the work provides the opportunity for viewers to experience internal and external reflection about what’s going on in the world and how that relates to themselves.

For details and to RSVP to the event, please click here. The event will be held December 5, 2019, starting at 6pm. The opening is free, and drinks and pupu will be provided. Find more work by Aria on her website, on Facebook, and Instagram.

What is ImpactART?
ImpactART supports Hawaii’s artists by creating an equal exchange of artwork for studio and exhibition space. Co-created by Impact Hub HNL and Honolulu Biennial Foundation in 2017 to address the need for art studios and the proper valuation of artists’ work. We have thus far hosted three ImpactART events, featuring artists Lauren Hana Chai, Boz Schurr, and a group show featuring Sheanae Tam, Ryan Higa, and Bai Xin Chen.

Anne Weber, Impact Hub HNL Community Manager, explains, “The idea for ImpactART was inspired by our commitment to creating community impact. When we opened in August 2017, we had huge blank walls and wanted to figure out a way to beautify the space, support local up and coming artists, inspire a new audience of art lovers, and show the business community how they too can support local arts in a creative way. It is a win-win.” To inquire about art space or to learn more about Impact Hub HNL, contact us.

Climathon Talk Story Tonight + This Week’s Newsletter

September 19, 2019

Check out this week’s newsletter with event updates and community news!


TONIGHT, September 19, 5:30PM – 8PM. Come learn from local activists, experts, and business owners about how to make sustainable choices as a consumer and get involved in climate action! The time is now and change starts with you! This is the KICKOFF event for CLIMATHON HONOLULU! 🌎Learn more and register here.


✨UPCOMING EVENTS✨


Freelancer’s Network: IP & Trademarks for Small Business

TODAY, September 19, 2019 at 12 PM – 1:30 PM. Dick Mosher of Denton’s Law Firm will share his decades of experience with intellectual property (IP) and trademark law. This is a free event, register here.

 


HI Tech Talk Story Sessions with Central Pacific Bank

Friday, September 20, 2019 at 12 PM – 1:30 PM. HITech Story is a speaker series in partnership with Central Pacific Bank, Entrepreneurs Sandbox & Chaminade University. Learn more here.


How to Find and Use Government Data

Monday, September 23, 2019 at 1 PM – 4 PM. This workshop, with a lead data specialist from the US Census Bureau, is intended to enable nonprofit organizations to find and better use census data to improve their effectiveness and outreach. Limited seating, please register.


Climathon Sustainability Marketplace

Thursday, September 26, 2019 at 5:30PM. Vote with your dollars for local businesses making zero-waste, sustainable products. You’ll find food, gifts, activist booths and MORE! Potluck pau hana after. BYO utensils, plates, and bags. Learn more here.


✨COMMUNITY NEWS✨


Meet our team behind The Creative Co. in our newest Member Spotlight! They run a Honolulu-based digital marketing firm based out of our upstairs offices..

Read more about this cool team in our most recent blog on our site.


Anne is this month’s Thrive Global Charity Challenger! For every $150 raised for deserving students to participate in a service travel experience, Anne will dress up all day in a ridiculous costume!

Donate here! 100% proceeds fund local students in a Summer of Service trip.  Click here to follow ridiculous costume updates! on Facebook!


The good folks at Reuse Hawaii, a sustainability-focused deconstruction non-profit + warehouse, are looking to hire a Project Developer.

Check out the job description here to learn more.

 

 


Updated Member Discount: we now have discounted Notary (mobile + on-site). Peek at our Member Discount program to save money on services, money, locally made products and services, website design, yoga, and MORE. See all your Discounts HERE!

Hawaii Kai Sneak Peek: Check out our New Location!

July 17, 2019

On July 11, Members, friends, and the Impact Hub Honolulu’s team came together at Liko’s Tap & Tavern at the Hawaii Kai Shopping Center, and over beers and vegan tacos we got to see the first glimpses of the newest Impact Hub location in Hawaii Kai.

The Impact Hub Hawaii Kai location, projected to open in March 2020, is approximately 7,200 square feet, with collaborative marina-view coworking, meeting rooms of various sizes, communal kitchen, and several private office spaces on the second floor, overlooking the water.

As the new location is very much under construction at this time, visitors were reminded by our Co-Founder George Yarbrough to wear our ‘imagination goggles’ to see the bright future of our newest location. Of the new location, Co-Founder Anne Weber says, “Our vision is an interconnected Hawaii where one membership gives each member access to 11 locations across the islands and 100 existing Impact Hubs worldwide.”

We are raising the funds to build out this location with our current Wefunder investment campaign; we’ve currently raised about $150,000 to be used for this new location. If you are interested in investing, click here to get started!

Thanks to those who came out to share in this momentous occasion. Check out all the pictures from our event here in our gallery:

Stories from the Raise: A Crowdfunding Showcase

May 28, 2019

Raising funds for your project, business, or launch is an exciting way to gather community support and bring in funds needed for your work. Crowdfunding allows everyone to support projects they love – promoting good work and democratizing investment for the 99%.

A few weeks ago we hosted a Crowdfunding Showcase to share some of the stories from local companies and organizations that have raised funds (or are currently raising funds) for their projects. There were brief presentations from the participating organizations, a panel discussion, and a time for Q&A.

Here are some takeaways from the presenters and their projects:

It takes a village, says Jim Murphy of Honolulu Habitat for Humanity.

Habitat for Humanity is a nonprofit housing developer committed to improving communities by increasing homeownership opportunities. They work with families and communities to build and repair homes and provides a zero interest mortgage. In addition, they work with the communities they serve to provide volunteer opportunities supporting the mission’s work. Their goal is to build 40 single family homes in the next 5 years. They have tried crowdfunding unsuccessfully in the past, and are looking forward to more strategic campaigns in the future. Jim said some of his crowdfunding efforts were ‘cautionary tales.’

Keep momentum going through the whole campaign. Plan ahead.

Mia Moore, is a local student that was just accepted into the Interlochen Arts Academy starting Fall 2019. This prestigious school has high tuition costs, and she’s raising funds on Go Fund Me to cover her school fees. She is currently at ~$4300 of her $28,000 goal.

Crowdfunding builds community, not just funds.

James Koshiba is volunteer co-founder of Hui Aloha and the Aloha Lives Here Campaign, which has been created to give Puuhonua O Waianae a permanent home. The campaign combines crowdfunding, major donors, and in-kind contributions to enable POW to acquire land and add permanent structures to what is already a model village community. Funding will also allow the village to test innovative technologies in housing, water, waste management, and agriculture. It will also enable the village to continue their outreach to other houseless communities, and provide lessons in modern-day village-building across Hawaii and beyond.

Innovate, but you don’t always have to reinvent the wheel.

David Aquino, is Blue Planet Foundation’s Creative Director, and has helped to grow their unique energy efficiency loan program called WeEfficiency. The program raises funds from the community for non-profits or schools to cover energy efficiency upgrades. These upgrades can be costly at the offset, but energy savings can be huge. With the money they save, they can pay back their donors and do more good work for their communities.

Don’t be afraid to get started.

Sarah “Mili” Milianta-Laffin is a 7th grade teacher at the STEM Lab at Ilima Intermediate in Ewa Beach, Campbell/Kapolei Complex. Prior to teaching in Ewa Beach, she taught for 11 years in Houston, Texas. Sarah is a DonorsChoose Ambassador, personally earning over $15,000 in supplies for her students from DonorsChoose since 2007. She talked about how amazing the program is, and how it makes it easy for her to fund the things she needs to make her classroom a great place for her students and student groups.

Give back to your supporters.

We also heard from Nam Vu, co-founder of Impact Hub and ‘chief geeky officer.’ Nam talked about our experience with Wefunder, and why we chose this program for our investment campaign. Nam says that, “We chose Wefunder because it aligns with our community building focus and enables our community to invest in our success was well as benefit from our success.”

Thanks to all of those that presented at the event!

Give Back to the Community During Volunteer Week

April 3, 2019

The second week in April is Volunteer Week. This is a national-level program led locally by member organization Kanu Hawaii.

Volunteer Week Hawaii 2019 aims to incorporate the UN SDGs, the framework for global sustainable development. These principles set forth by the United Nations are also the guiding foundation for Impact Hubs the world over, and we are so excited to be partnering with Kanu for one of 100+ statewide events.

On Friday, April 12, the Impact Hub team has partnered with Kanu Hawaiʻi, Blue Zones Project, Honolulu Civil Beat, and HPR Generation Listen to host a cleanup at Old Stadium Park, an historic community gathering space in Honolulu. This event is free to the public- if you’d like to join, please register your interest here. After the cleanup, join us at Pint & Jigger to mingle and enjoy special cocktails made for the occasion.

Volunteer Week events are diverse in time, location, and theme. Not sure what organization you’d like to support? You can see the full Oahu volunteer event calendar here to browse events during the week that include everything from beach cleanups across the island, charity walks, Biki-based Meals on Wheels, bike path cleanups, food drives, forest plantings, splashing around in lo’i, and/or helping the newest (and only) animal sanctuary on Oahu. Regardless of your location or conservation passion, there is an event for you!

The 2019 Volunteer Week is focused on organizations and actions that help encourage or city and state communities to move towards our sustainability goals, guided by the Aloha+ Challenge. Kanu Hawaii Executive Director, Keone Kealoha, explains on their website, “We hope to link each volunteer event throughout the Week to the appropriate UN SDGs and Aloha+ Challenge goals. Involvement in local volunteerism translates to positive impact, not only on your immediate community, but also our islandwide and global communities.”

If you are a local non-profit or community group, you can sign up to host an event here. If you’d like to volunteer your time (as an individual or a group), learn more here. Browse all the available events on your island (it’s a statewide event!) and recommend to friends on neighbor islands.

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