The idea first caught the eye of the CEOs who judge Harvard University’s Social Enterprise "Pitch for Change" and gave it their grand prize in 2012.

Since then Ho‘oulu Pacific has picked up awards worth more than $50,000 in national competitions sponsored by heavyweights including Dell, Fish 2.0, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and, locally, Cha­mi­nade University’s Hogan Entrepreneurs Non-Profit Business Plan Competition.

The brainchild of a team of social entrepreneurs from the University of Hawaii-West Oahu and UH-Manoa, "Ho‘o­ulu" means to grow or to inspire. It is piloting a relatively simple business model designed to promote social good, with potentially far-reaching impact.

Ho‘oulu Pacific helps families in poor neighborhoods feed themselves and their communities by raising fresh vegetables and fish in backyard aquaponic systems. Already, 75 homesteaders in Wai­ma­nalo have set up Ho‘o­ulu’s soil-less miniature "farms," and the organization is gearing up to expand across Oahu and the Pacific.

"We really wanted to try to address some of the food security issues in the Pacific islands," said Keith Sakuda, assistant professor of management at UH-West Oahu, who co-founded the organization with David Walfish, Ilima Ho-Lasti­mosa, Eric Martinson and Scott Shi­bata, now an adviser.

Aquaponics is a symbiotic system connecting fish and plants. The nutrients in the wastewater from the fish tank nourish the plants, which in turn cleanse that water so it can be recycled back to the fish. Vegetables and fruit grow in basins connected by pipes to a large open fish tank. The system requires little water or space, and plants grow faster than with traditional methods.

The interconnected web echoes on a tiny scale the ancient Hawaiian ahupuaa, the land division that stretched from the mountains to the sea, encompassing all the resources needed to sustain a community. Historically, people who lived in the mountains would barter with those at the shore.

Just as that system once nourished a vibrant, healthy population of Hawaiians, Ho‘o­ulu Pacific hopes to do the same. Its goal is to tackle problems of poverty and obesity-related diseases, by changing diets and building self-sufficiency.

"Anyone can stick an aquaponics system in a home," Walfish said. "That doesn’t mean it’s going to work. We’re not an aquaponics company. It’s a tool we use to create change in these communities."

The project’s all-inclusive approach includes technical and entrepreneurial guidance, along with nutrition and health education. Working with local partners, it teaches people not only how to grow food, but how to clean and cook the fish and prepare sometimes unfamiliar vegetables.

"I had no idea what I was getting myself into, but I was glad I did," said Moana Scholtz, a Wai­ma­nalo homesteader who lives with her family in the home where she was raised. Out back, where an old black sedan once took up space, there is now a living, breathing ecosystem with the soothing sound of a water feature.

Bright green kalo leaves reach for the sky while ong choi vines drape the edges of plant beds filled with volcanic cinder. Dozens of dappled tila­pia nose around in the waters of their black, circular tank.

Scholtz had never planted anything in the yard before signing up for a workshop led by Ho-Lasti­mosa in November. Before she knew it, she was building the sturdy wooden table for the vegetable beds and hooking up plastic pipes and the "bell siphon" that regulates the ebb and flow of water.

Her aim was simple: "to feed my family better and know where my food comes from, and be able to share with my neighbors."

Her tilapia are still too young to eat, but she enjoys the ong choi stir-fried with pork. In the last several months, she has grown strawberries, eggplant, cucumbers, tomatoes, sweet potato and basil. A restaurant worker and hanai mother to a 4-year-old and a 5-year-old, she doesn’t have much time, but says the system isn’t demanding.

Working with families and children can change patterns of diet and lifestyle ingrained over generations, according to Ho-Lasti­mosa, a master gardener and aquaponics expert who is working on her master’s in social work at UH-Manoa.

"They think food comes from the store," she said. "If you show them how to grow it and they plant it and they harvest, they eat it. It’s changing a paradigm."

The vision for Ho‘o­ulu Pacific reaches beyond individual families to the broader community. Its founders plan to set up a distribution system to sell surplus produce and fish, generating income for the backyard farmers and money to reinvest in reaching out to new families.

Ho‘oulu’s home aqua­ponic systems use 80 percent less water yet are six times as productive as traditional agriculture per unit area, Walfish said. They require no fertilizer or pesticides.

The organization plans to scale up in Wai­ma­nalo with larger systems before moving on, probably to the Wai­a­nae Coast. The new systems will enable a family to produce more than 1,000 pounds of vegetables and fish per year, said Walfish, vice president of the Hawaii Aquaculture and Aquaponics Association.

Because aquaponics is a living system, it can be a bit tricky, requiring appropriate oxygen levels and bacterial growth. Ho‘o­ulu Pacific staff visit weekly to check up and keep things on track.

"Aquaponics works amazingly well, but there are more variables to go wrong and it’s a little bit more of a challenge," Sakuda said.

Kau‘ilani DeMello experienced that learning curve with her family’s system, which her 2-year-old daughter, Kaydence Nobriga, now helps her tend.

"When we first put it in, we kept asking, ‘What do we do now, what do we do now?’" said the Wai­ma­nalo resident, a recently minted emergency medical technician. "We had so many questions. It’s been fun."

They have raised bok choy, Manoa lettuce and a kale plant that got so big it outgrew its container.

"My dad used to fish a lot," DeMello said. "We don’t do it as much these days. I figure this is a new way. We don’t have to leave the yard!"

The system is versatile, enabling home farmers to switch their crops as needed. More than 40 varieties of vegetables and fruit were grown in the Wai­ma­nalo pilot program. The market for fish is strong, with hundreds of thousands of pounds of tila­pia imported into Hawaii every year, Walfish said.

"Tilapia works well because it’s very hardy and very forgiving," he said. "The market is very, very good in Hawaii."

The aquaponic systems in Wai­ma­nalo were installed at no cost, paid for with a grant from the Department of Health’s Healthy Hawaii Initiative. But Ho‘o­ulu wants to be self-sustaining, not dependent on grants. It anticipates that families will pay something for their systems in the future, perhaps paying off costs over time.

"We’re preaching self-sufficiency and we want to be self-sufficient," explained Walsh, who is studying business at UH-West Oahu and has a biology degree from Williams College in Massachusetts.

He and his colleagues see great potential benefit for poor Pacific island nations, which have high unemployment and among the top obesity rates in the world.

"They can’t find good jobs," Sakuda said. "They are restricted to eating terrible canned food that they ship in to you. Diabetes is through the roof."

Low-lying atolls are losing arable land and water to sea-level rise, he noted, but aquaponic systems need little water or space.

"As much as we love Hawaii, we believe our biggest impact will be in the Pacific islands," Sakuda said. "We just need to get there."