Trusted by the Native Hawaiian communities we represent, Mālama Kaʻū Foundation serves as a bridge between our people and the United States military across the Pacific.

Led by retired Native Hawaiian military officers and industry leaders who are dedicated to serving our Native Hawaiian neighbors and kūpuna. Drawing on the combat experience of veterans raised on these islands, our NHO board of directors carries both the profound kuleana of a people who have called Hawaiʻi home for generations and a clear-eyed grasp of the operational demands facing the warfighters who train here to defend the nation.

Our NHO board members bridge that gap naturally — because there is no gap for us. We have served this nation in uniform and come home to these same communities our entire lives. We don’t strengthen the Department of War’s relationship with local residents by building it. We strengthen it because those residents are our parents, our cousins, our neighbors, our kūpuna. You cannot fake that. You cannot contract it out. And you cannot replicate it with anyone who wasn’t born into it.

Mission Statement – Our “Why”

Our NHO is a genuinely Native-Hawaiian-led nonprofit that exists to keep one specific promise in one specific place: to build a dialysis clinic in Kaʻū, funded by an 8(a) economic engine that Congress wrote into law as economic development, and accounted for in the open, dollar by dollar, so anyone can see exactly where the money goes.

By Federal Law, an NHO Shall Be Led and Controlled by Native Hawaiians.

Who are Native Hawaiians?  — “any individual whose ancestors were natives, prior to 1778, of the area which now comprises the State of Hawaii.” – 13 CFR § 124.3