Founded in 2017, The Pōpolo Project is committed to redefining perceptions of Black people in Hawai‘i and creates deep reconnection to ourselves as individuals, to our community, our ancestors, and the lands that sustain us. They envision a just and inclusive future for Hawai‘i, brought forward by exploring shared histories and culture to intentionally build connections across communities. They achieve this through educational experiences and cultural organizing that create new narratives about Blackness and Black people here and across the Pacific region. They build community power by strengthening collective memory, practicing cultures together, developing a vocabulary to talk about race in Hawaiʻi, and highlighting intergenerational efforts to connect the Black community in Hawaiʻi to the liberation efforts of others, including kānaka Hawaiʻi, from the 1960s Civil Rights and Black Power movements to contemporary times. They work to be a resource for media, education, and research that centers the Black experience as rooted in a diverse ecosystem of knowledge, with access to legitimate platforms for telling their stories on their terms to redirect narratives about Black people, their histories, their present, and their futures.
GRASSROOTS
SOCIAL CHANGE
SINCE 1972
The Pōpolo Project
