Community / You’re about as likely to hear ‘innovative’ and ‘Kalihi’ uttered in the same sentence as ‘homeless’ and ‘Kohala.’ The blighted urban community, comprising a largely immigrant, 79.5 percent Asian population and O’ahu’s two biggest public housing developments, has its reputation decorated by crime stats and cock fights. But community members are clearing the overgrown tangle of Kalihi Valley to uncover the once-flourishing breadbasket of the ahupua’a and restore it to a heart of wellness. And for their efforts, last week the Kalihi Valley Nature Park project received the award for innovation at the national Active Living By Design conference held in Colorado.

‘I don’t know anywhere else in the nation where someone’s taken a 100-acre jungle and turned it into a park with community gardens, hiking trails and a cultural learning center,’ says Gary Gill, the Active Living By Design program coordinator for Kokua Kalihi Valley (KKV), the comprehensive health care center fathering the project. Out of 960 applicants across the country, the Kalihi Valley Nature Park and Active Living Center was chosen in 2003 as one of 25 community partners to receive a $200,000 grant to participate in the program funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and administered by the University of North Carolina School of Public Health. Kokua Kalihi Valley holds a 20-year lease on the 100-acre state park.

The purpose of the Active Living By Design program is to address a wellness problem spawned by development that doesn’t encourage physical activity in its design.

If traffic on H-1 is any indication, people are predisposed to get from point A to point B in their cars. ‘In order to encourage people to be more active, we need to design communities that make physical activity safe and convenient,’ Gill says, describing workable concepts like walking school buses, where an entourage of parents get together and walk their children to school in neighborhoods that are pedestrian-friendly.

Researchers have found that 70 percent of Americans do not meet the U.S. Surgeon General’s recommendation for physical activity. According to the KKV health center, ‘Over one-third (35 percent) of [Kalihi Valley] residents are foreign-born, and the population is at increased risk of poor health due to high rates of diabetes, hypertension, coronary heart disease, obesity, substance abuse and high cholesterol.’ Kalihi has been declared a Medically Underserved Area and a Health Personnel Shortage Area for primary care, mental health and dental care.

Active living goals start simply: accumulate at least 30 minutes of physical activity each day. Not everybody wants to achieve this via surfing or a Stairmaster, and some people object to the idea of exercise altogether. The philosophy of active living, however, encourages fitness by way of integrating it into your lifestyle, much of which is determined by the community where you live. The exercise could come in the form of playing with the kids in the park, walking to do your shopping, working in the garden or bicycling to work.

‘Health care is not just about getting people to see doctors. It’s to help people live more healthy lives,’ says Mark Hamamoto, the community development coordinator of Kokua Kalihi Valley. He offers an example of a group of Micronesian women with diabetes. ‘Exercise and nutrition are key to managing diabetes, but these women don’t like to exercise. So we told them they could start a garden, and they’re really excited about it. They really want to grow their own food.’

According to Gill, ‘there’s a lifetime of work and activity to be done here,’ but they’re already making tremendous progress. In a few years the Nature Park will encompass a 3- to 4-mile network of hiking and biking trails up to the top of Kamanaiki Ridge, acres of community gardens and a public campground.

So far, several community groups have been involved in developing the 100-acre park. Boy Scout troops have camped overnight, hauling out bamboo by day. Archaeological sites are being restored. Halau Lokahi Public Charter School is building a canoe from an albisia tree. Farrington High School students have been involved in reforestation, replanting native trees. The caretaker’s home has been renovated to become a cultural center and meeting space for KKV training classes. Ultimately, the site will resemble something of what it used to be pre-Western contact with flourishing agricultural terraces, lo’i fields fed by the Kalihi stream and a native plant forest.

Program coordinators expect to have the park open to the public this summer. Their hope is that the project will become a model for providing opportunities for active living and land restoration in blighted urban areas. As Hamamoto expresses, ‘The real big picture is the health of the people depends on the health of the land.’