Hawaii grocery shoppers donated $236,045 to island food banks during the recent holiday season through the Check-Out Hunger program.
The amount was an 11 percent increase over the previous year.
From Nov. 7 through Jan. 15, shoppers statewide were able to make a donation to the Hawaii Foodbank and neighbor island food banks by tearing off a Check-Out Hunger coupon at the register. A $2.81 coupon fed a child breakfast for a week, a $12.43 coupon fed a senior citizen lunch for a month and a $16.84 coupon fed a family dinner for a week.
Participating retailers included Times Super Markets, Safeway, Shima’s Supermarket, Don Quijote, Tamura Supermarket, Tamura’s Market, Tamura’s Fine Wine & Liquors, Kokua Market Natural Foods Co-op, KTA Superstores and Big Save Stores.
Since its inception in 1994, Check-Out Hunger has raised nearly $2 million in Hawaii. Kraft Foods joined as its major sponsor in 2003, and donates $5,000 each year.
Other grants and donations:
» Five Hawaii research projects were among seven grant awardees in the U.S.-affiliated Pacific Islands region that will share $1 million in federal money to help plan for, respond to and recover from coastal hazards such as storms.
The University of Hawaii at Hilo will install coastal high-frequency radar arrays to monitor ocean currents and improve community storm preparedness in Hilo Bay.
The Maui County Department of Planning will study "Post-Disaster Reconstruction Guidelines and Protocols for Conservation of Coastal Resources and Protection of Coastal Communities."
The city Department of Emergency Management will work on a "Ready Hawaii Smartphone Application" to provide real-time weather and hazard updates.
Two other UH projects are related to disaster preparedness in Micronesia and the Marshall Islands.
Specific grant amounts for each project were not made available.
The grant program was organized through a partnership of the Sea Grant College Program of the University of Hawaii at Manoa and the Coastal Storms Program of the Coastal Services Center, a unit of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
» The Japan-America Society of Hawaii recently received two grants to support educational programs for Hawaii schools and students.
Hawaiian Airlines donated about $40,000 worth of free and discounted airfares so high school teams from around the state can participate in JASH’s Japan Wizards Statewide Academic Team Competition this month on Oahu.
The Atherton Foundation gave $5,000 to support science, technology, engineering and math education for middle school students. JASH conceived of a project to use an abacuslike calculating tool used in Japanese schools, the "soroban," to make math fun and interactive. JASH teamed with the instructors of Araki Hiroya Soroban School to bring soroban classes to public middle schools in Hawaii.
» AlohaCare, one of Hawaii’s largest health insurance plans, awarded a total of $30,000 to six nonprofit organizations through its annual AlohaCare Community Conscience Award.
AlohaCare provides grants to organizations with programs focusing on the prevention and/or treatment of common health issues; projects helping seniors and disabled people; and initiatives to improve access to preventive health care services.
AlohaCare gave $5,000 each to the Affordable Housing and Homeless Alliance; the Laie Elementary School, Parent Teacher Community Organization; Hawaii Island Adult Care; Hilo Medical Center Foundation; Hospice of Hilo; and Malama Na Makua a Keiki Inc. on Maui.
» Subaru Hawaii announced that its "Share the Love" sales event in the last two months of 2012 raised a total of $30,000 for five Hawaii nonprofits.
The company gave $8,000 to Big Brothers Big Sisters Hawaii, $8,000 to the Hawaii Wildlife Fund, $8,000 to the Oahu Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, $3,000 to SPCA Maui and $3,000 to the Hawaii Island Humane Society.
The "Share the Love" event donated $250 for every new vehicle sold by Subaru Hawaii dealers from Nov. 1 through Dec. 31.
» Employees of Monsanto Maui donated more than 20 hours of labor and $250 in grant money to clear nearly 2,500 non-native pines in a 6-acre area of threatened shrub land in the Waikamoi Preserve in December.
It was the second such community project that Monsanto employees participated in with The Nature Conservancy.
According to The Nature Conservancy, if left unchecked, the fragile ecosystem at Waikamoi would have been overtaken by the non-native pine, threatening the preserve’s rare dry mamane subalpine shrub land, found only in East Maui and on Hawaii island.
