Aloha United Way (AUW) and the Hawai‘i Community Foundation (HCF) have partnered to administer the 2022-2024 ALICE Initiative Cohort.

The 2022-2024 ALICE Initiative Cohort supports the upward mobility of ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed) households by focusing on improving systemic economic inequities in Hawai‘i. The Fund offers support over three years to nonprofit organizations based on O‘ahu that are engaged in the ALICE impact areas of Financial Stability and Savings and/or Safe and Affordable Housing.

For questions on the 2022-2024 ALICE Initiative Cohort, please contact Larissa Kick, Vice President – Community Grants & Initiatives at lkick@hcf-hawaii.org.

Visit the Aloha United Way website to learn more about ALICE.

SEE THE PRESS RELEASE

ALICE Initiative Cohort Awardees

Total Distributed: $4.5 million over a three-year period
Total Award Recipients: 17

Catholic Charities Hawai‘i
Impact Area: Safe and Affordable Housing; Financial Stability and Savings
Award per year, for three years: $85,000
Catholic Charities Hawai‘i (CCH) will provide the Akahai E Komo Mai (Akahai), a financial wellness program designed to assist ALICE families to achieve stability and develop the skills to build a pathway out of poverty. Akahai is an innovative approach that weaves lessons in financial literacy with mental health screenings and awareness together with Native Hawaiian cultural values. Over course of three years, Akahai will aim to provide case-management financial counseling to 75 households, and connect more than 1,200 individuals to supportive resources.

Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement
Impact Area: Financial Stability and Savings
Award per year, for three years: $85,000
CNHA’s Hawaiian Trades Academy provides workforce development for economically and socially disadvantaged communities. The goal of the program is to raise the household income of families in Hawai‘i. The academy will help ALICE households with job training, career advancement, and financial education; improve income and savings; and increase access to public benefit programs. CNHA understands the value in community-centered service and the importance of creating equity and access to living wage employment for the advancement of Native Hawaiians and all who call Hawai‘i home.

Family Promise of Hawai‘i
Impact Area: Financial Stability and Savings
Award per year, for three years: $100,000
To help ALICE families stabilize, Family Promise of Hawai‘i is launching a new initiative called WAA (Working, Attaining, Achieving). The program will support financial stability and an increase in savings for ALICE families. The structure of the program is modeled after the Hawaiian outrigger canoe (wa‘a) which requires a strong and resilient lead to set the destination and tone for the journey, as well as a competent and agile crew who work closely together to reach long distance goals. The program will work with participants to co-create individualized plans to identify educational and financial goals and map out a course of action to achieve them.

Feed The Hunger Fund
Impact Area: Financial Stability and Savings
Award per year, for three years: $100,000
The Investing in Economic Growth Program aims to increase earned income and savings for ALICE households by providing $3.5 million in loan capital to low-income entrepreneurs otherwise unable to access loans. FTHF will also provide 550 entrepreneurs with business development through one-on-one coaching, supplemented with an on-line training platform of 200+ modules. FTHF’s technical assistance to small entrepreneurs often results in decreased household expenses, increased credit scores, and better access to resources.

Goodwill Industries of Hawai‘i Inc.
Impact Area: Financial Stability and Savings
Award per year, for three years: $80,000
Goodwill’s partnership with Komohale Services will offer an array of services on-site at Komohale’s affordable rental housing to address residents’ needs to get ahead, overcome challenges, and gain greater financial independence. The program's collaborative model will include evidence-based financial literacy workshops, financial coach referrals, digital skills training, job readiness training, one-on-one counseling, goal planning, assessments, and access to community resources and VITA services. As one of Hawai‘i’s preeminent providers of employment and training services, Goodwill can identify needs, work across disciplines, and leverage multiple partners and initiatives to offer holistic wraparound services.

Hawai‘i Appleseed Center for Law and Economic Justice
Impact Area: Safe and Affordable Housing; Financial Stability and Savings
Award per year, for three years: $100,000
Hawai‘i Appleseed will support the work of the ALICE Cohort by: (1) engaging the perspectives and voices of ALICE households to inform and pursue policy change; (2) providing policy research to identify effective means of addressing economic inequity; and (3) supporting collective action to achieve systemic change. A centerpiece of this program is the launching of a cohort of up to 20 affordable housing fellows, helping develop emerging leaders from diverse backgrounds across the state who have lived-experience with housing insecurity–equipping them to engage with policymakers and influence housing policy that helps struggling working families.

Hawai‘i Children's Action Network
Impact Area: Financial Stability and Savings
Award per year, for three years: $80,000
Hawai‘i Children’s Action Network will work to build and strengthen the voice of ALICE families to advocate for policies and systems changes that increase household income and reduce household expenses. Key to this work will be expanding our existing efforts into a stronger Family Lived Expertise Initiative (Family LEI); building community engagement activities and platforms for involvement in policy and advocacy that is accessible to ALICE families; and integrating family voices at the center of our policy and advocacy work.

Hawai‘i HomeOwnership Center
Impact Area: Financial Stability and Savings
Award per year, for three years: $50,000
Hawai‘i HomeOwnership Center provides classes, coaching, and post-purchase services to create sustainable homeowners. Program members are primarily low-moderate income and money management, and understanding credit is the foundation of our curriculum. HHC was in the last ALICE cohort to test a Financial Capabilities Pilot program providing a two-part money management workshop and a savings match up to $350 for those who saved and submitted a budget for six consecutive months. This proposal revises the program to deliver workshop sessions through an online, self-paced course, as well providing a new type of savings account to participants (not custodial accounts).

Hawaiian Community Assets Inc.
Impact Area: Safe and Affordable Housing; Financial Stability and Savings
Award per year, for three years: $100,000
The Economic Self-Sufficiency for ALICE households and Below project will address the need for financial counseling, income supports, and career coaching to improve the financial capacity of ALICE and below households to achieve economic self-sufficiency. This will ensure these households are able to pursue economic opportunities and move into affordable housing projects as they come on-line, which will in turn reduce carrying costs for developer partners and position them to build new projects more quickly. Overall, this program will lead to increased income/assets and/or reduced housing cost burdens on ALICE and below households.

IHS, The Institute for Human Services Inc.
Impact Area: Safe and Affordable Housing; Financial Stability and Savings
Award per year, for three years: $80,000
IHS’ Kahauiki Village (KV) program will continue to provide affordable, permanent housing and supportive services for formerly homeless families with earned income. In addition to direct services provided by IHS’ KV staff, partner agencies and community groups provide a variety of children’s education and enrichment, family strengthening, and parent skill building activities on site. Funding will support essential KV staff positions that support the basic social services provided by the case manager by developing relationships with new partners and opening doors for participants to enter their programs, building household’s tenancy skills to improve their ability to maintain housing tenure, and connecting families with resources, services, and skill building activities needed to maintain and foster family wellness.

Institute for Native Pacific Education and Culture
Impact Area: Financial Stability and Savings
Award per year, for three years: $100,000
INPEACE helps educate ALICE households through workshops and coaching centered around personal finances. Ho‘oulu Waiwai, which translates to “to build wealth,” is a community-based program that works to improve financial stability through education. It offers culturally relevant financial workshops, counseling with trained financial coaches, and matched savings to increase the financial standing of ALICE households. The program will also organize a Community of Practice for financial capabilities practitioners to collaborate with other agencies to strengthen ALICE work.

Kōkua Kalihi Valley Comprehensive Family Services
Impact Area: Safe and Affordable Housing; Financial Stability and Savings
Award per year, for three years: $85,000
The goal of this project is to increase economic sovereignty among KKV ALICE households by providing, through KKV and its partners, a broader and sustainable array of economic supports, including an expanded public benefits enrollment team and new (for KKV) financial, job and educational guidance services, as a standard component of KKV programming long term. KKV will also increase community participation in ALICE advocacy/policy, through documented ALICE-related talk story events and—through these and other events—identify and train ALICE household leaders/activists in Kalihi, increasing their participation in policy/leadership venues effecting ALICE households.

Legal Aid Society of Hawai‘i
Impact Area: Financial Stability and Savings
Award per year, for three years: $100,000
This program supports the levers that move ALICE households toward economic stability and mobility, by providing legal information and services that address barriers to mobility. LASH services will remove barriers to increased and stable income, and address legal issues related to consumer debt. The program also supports collaboration with agencies involved in this ALICE cohort, to develop a cross-sector system that more efficiently supports the ALICE population.

Parents And Children Together
Impact Area: Financial Stability and Savings
Award per year, for three years: $100,000
PACT will provide immediate economic improvement for ALICE families and advocate for policy and systems changes that address the impossible financial burdens for individuals and families that are under resourced. PACT will invite and incentivize ALICE families to join Getting Ahead (GA) cohorts that will educate and support one another over 16 weeks to grow financially and in employment. Leaders from among the GA cohorts will be tapped in order to support their critical voice in community development. Concurrently, PACT will advocate in all sectors to change policies and practices that financially cripple Hawai‘i’s working poor.

Partners in Development Foundation
Impact Area: Financial Stability and Savings
Award per year, for three years: $80,000
PIDF’s Kupa Aina (KA) natural farming project will expand its community partnerships to provide Hawai‘i’s most at-risk/vulnerable youth with mentorship and vocational training opportunities, financial literacy education, and supplemental services to increase their independence and financial stability. KA will also donate food to ALICE households through community partnerships. In the long term, the goal is to train a new generation of farm workers who are invested in our Island community, while providing them with stable, skilled labor work, furthering our food security and sustainability. This support will cascade into better long-term outcomes for ALICE families island-wide.

Residential Youth Services & Empowerment (RYSE)
Impact Area: Safe and Affordable Housing
Award per year, for three years: $50,000
Residential Youth Services & Empowerment (RYSE) provides a continuum of support for Hawai‘i’s houseless youth aged 18-24. Its new Tiny Village in Wai‘anae provides a long-term paradigm shift by providing ALICE and house-less youth with dignified spaces that are well integrated into the Hawai‘i community. This pilot model village affords youth safety and respect while resolving a larger problem by creating a concert of tiny solutions in which the disenfranchised are invited back into the fabric of society.

Waikīkī Community Center
Impact Area: Financial Stability and Savings
Award per year, for three years: $125,000
Waikīkī Community Center’s ALICE Asset Building and Resource Access program increases financial stability for ALICE seniors and families by creating a seamless network of support that provides the holistic services needed to address their multiple challenges, stabilize their situations, and allow them to thrive. The program will stabilize ALICE participants financially by: 1) building an emergency fund through matched savings; 2) providing financial education so participants can continue to save and access financial services and credit after the program; 3) decreasing household expenses by helping participants access public resources; and 4) addressing the holistic needs of participants through case management/resources coordination so they can stabilize their overall situations.