Mission • Vision • Values
Namahana School is an expression of our community’s most cherished values and highest aspirations.
Mission
Namahana School’s mission is to serve the communities of Haleleʻa and Koʻolau with a rigorous education that cultivates deep relationships with ʻāina (natural environment), kanaka (self, family, community), and ao (cultures of the world). Namahana School prepares students for professional and personal fulfillment with skills that empower them to actively contribute to a resilient future on Kauaʻi.
Vision
Namahana students are active and engaged caretakers of their island home who grow to be leaders seeking solutions to the greatest challenges facing their communities. Namahana School nurtures ʻāina-conscious graduates who know who they are, where they come from, and have the professional and personal skills to be kiaʻi (caretakers) for their home.
Guiding Values
Namahana School is guided and inspired by three central values that were distilled from our community engagement process. These values represent our community’s most cherished assets and aspirations for our children. They also provide a framework for an educational experience that reflects and honors our specific cultural, historical, and ecological context. At their essence, “Aloha ʻĀina,” “Aloha Kanaka,” and “Aloha i ke Ao” are rooted in home, self, and family. Our learning begins here, expanding in scope until we can see how the entire planet is also our home and all world cultures are extensions of our community.
The responsibility to mālama (care for), steward, respect, and protect our home and, by extension, the planet. “Aloha ʻĀina” starts at home and extends to our greater community within our ahupuaʻa (land division), moku (district), and island. “Aloha ʻĀina” is how we interact with our environment and means treating it with respect and reverence.
Aloha ‘Āina
Care, compassion, empathy, kindness and respect for self, for family, and for our community; the foundation for developing pono relationships. The value of “Aloha Kanaka” starts with self, with a focus on emotional intelligence and self-awareness. When we aloha ourselves, we are able to aloha our ʻohana (family) and broader communities.
Aloha Kanaka
Taking the values of “Aloha ʻĀina and “Aloha Kanaka” and applying them to the world community, “Aloha i ke Ao” is how we interact with other cultures when we visit them or when others come to visit us. By starting with our family culture(s) and expanding to Hawaiʻi and its diverse local cultures, we lay the foundation for engaging with communities worldwide.
Aloha i ke Ao
“At Namahana, we strive to uphold all three of these values, because in doing so we nurture pono students, teachers, staff, and leaders. In this balance, we create a pono school.”
Dr. Kapua Chandler
Namahana School Leader