Duane Kurisu, founder of the Rediscovering Hawai’i’s Soul movement, reflects on how his humble plantation upbringing shaped his values of caring for one another.
Duane Kurisu, president of aio, the HONOLULU parent company, recently gave a deeply personal TEDx talk in Thimphu, Bhutan, reflecting on how his humble plantation upbringing on the island of Hawaii shaped his values of dignity and caring for one another. These values lay the foundations for the Rediscovering the Soul Movement of Hawai’iwhich was founded and is supported by many of Hawai’i’s top business, government and community leaders.
In the March 20 talk, Kurisu shared stories of growing up feeling like a “third-class person” and how that inspired him to create Kahauiki Village, a community for homeless families on O’ahu that opened in 2018. The soul of a place, Kurisu says, is revealed in how it treats its people, especially those who are most forgotten. “This is a story, not just about homelessness or building homes. This is a story about how character and community can become the invisible force to enable collaboration,” Kurisu said. “This is a story about the magic of bringing good things to life, and it begins with aloha, the love within and around us.”
The talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but organized independently.
Transcription
When you think of the soul of a place, you usually think of its beauty, but it’s something else. It is something that goes much deeper. I think the true soul of the place is revealed by how it cares for its people, and especially those who are often forgotten.
My home is Hawaii. I live in a place that is half a world away. From Bhutan, I bring you the magic of the aloha spirit. Yes, Hawai’i is beautiful, but the Hawai’i that makes us is more than its beauty. It’s about our way of life. My father used to say that you get out of life what you put into it. But for people like me who grew up in sugar plantation towns, we were lucky because we got more. I was born in a time and place in Hawaii when sugar was king. We are poor, but we didn’t know we were poor because we felt we had everything we needed.
We thrived as a community. When you caught two fish, you kept one and gave the other to your neighbor. When you harvested your garden, you saved enough for that night and gave away everything else. We were not inspired by the accumulation of money. Instead, we aspire to be people of character, people without fear, where trust, generosity and friendship were not virtues we strive for. They were a way of life.
You know, we’re all shaped by the way we grow up. And for me, even though the days of sugar plantations and sugar towns are long gone, the values of character and community still live within me and shape the way I live, the ways I lead, and even the companies that are built as value-driven companies.
But outside our city, things were not always so kind. When we went out, my mother and father with five children in total were sometimes ridiculed for the way they dressed. Me in cut-off jeans and a hand-me-down shirt, and how we spoke in country-style, creolized English. I remember as a child I was embarrassed and felt like I was a third class person.
And today, I can’t imagine how my mother and father must have felt. And those feelings still live inside me. So when I see the faces of people on the street, people in public places, marginalized people and they feel like their life doesn’t count, I know that feeling. I know that look. These are not disposable people, so when homelessness became a big problem in Hawai’i, I naturally felt that the long-term solution to homelessness was to build community, and not just build a shelter. So that was a genesis of the creation of Kahauiki Village, a community for homeless families, designed for dignity in a place to rebuild people’s lives.
But getting Kahauiki Village off the ground wasn’t easy because when we started, I didn’t know how we were going to build it or where the money was going to come from. But the need was overwhelming and the vision was clear. I don’t know where 2017 has gone. I put everything into that year, every ounce of energy, every waking moment, into working to complete Kahauiki Village. And I was fortunate to have an amazing group of friends who were known to be the best in their industry, who came forward with the same passion and commitment to help fulfill this vision. Together, we created this environment of trust, unprecedented, because millions of dollars in construction were done with a handshake. There were no written agreements. Our word was our bond. And for me, holding together this ecosystem of government and public trust, finance and fundraising, construction, social service, volunteering, public speaking and giving guided tours was a huge challenge. But all the while, the vision of the goal never faded, even though I carried with me this feeling of inadequacy, because I’m not a developer.
I tell you, it was a time of loneliness and fear. But miracles appeared in many places. When I went to suppliers and distributors for help, not one person said no. Resources appeared unexpectedly and volunteerism flourished. As thousands of people came to put up walls, plant trees, paint houses and furnish units, together we built 144 homes, bathrooms and kitchens, and built support buildings typical of a plantation town, daycare, preschool, post office, community store, recreation center. And we even built our own power system. They made the village the first community in the world to be completely off the grid.
When we finished our first 30 homes, we had a welcome event for the first 30 families to receive their keys. And I saw this mother and this child and I instinctively reached for this child and asked him to come to the uncle, an endearing term for an old man. I held him in my arms, looked into his eyes and saw brothers and sisters, my mom and dad, my friends and all the people we grew up with in these plantation towns, because now this boy has hope and he had a chance to dream.
Over the years, there are so many people who came to visit Kahauiki Village. And they almost always say, “There’s something really special about this place. I see smiling faces. I hear children laughing.” And that’s what I tell them. What you feel is the soul of the Kahauiki people. And the soul of Kahauiki Village is a cumulative soul for all the people who made it possible. This is a story not just about homelessness or housing. This is a story about how character and community can become the invisible force to enable collaboration.
This is a story about the magic of bringing good things to life, and it begins with aloha, the love that surrounds and surrounds us. And when our soul emanates aloha, it allows us the freedom to express life as authentic human beings. And that authenticity can be contagious in moving people’s souls to find a shared purpose. So I ask you this question. It’s a question I ask myself quite often. How can I make my life change? And that is the deeper purpose for rediscovering the soul of Hawai’i.
And it’s a journey that isn’t limited to Hawai’i. It is not limited by geography or culture because the soul of a place does not live in buildings. It lives in how we see and feel for one another in choosing love over fear, community over isolation, and shared humanity over indifference.
So when I held that boy in my arms in the village of Kahauiki and looked into his eyes, I knew that what we were doing was not just building buildings. It was about regaining dignity. It was about regaining belonging. It was about regaining hope. And this is the means to rediscover the soul of a place, therefore, any place. And it starts when you start caring for each other. It thrives on building trust and stays with every person it knows it belongs to.
