Gathering will delve into issue of peace

Homelessness around the Hawaii Children’s Discovery Center has strengthened the museum’s resolve to bring an international conference to Honolulu this fall.

Coming to the Hawai‘i Convention Center on Oct. 19-21 as part of the Schools of the Future Conference, the Asia Pacific Children’s Museum Conference aims to attract 300 participants. So far, commitments have come from Hawaii, Philippines, Austria, China, Japan and the mainland.

The gathering’s theme is “Peace With the Heart of Aloha.”

Loretta Yajima, chairwoman of the Hawaii Children’s Discovery Center, said more conference attendees from here and abroad are needed to share stories, ideas and programs that prepare children to become world leaders in a global society, where “peace education” has become increasingly important. The event is open to anyone with interest in the conference themes of fostering warmheartedness and bringing peace to children in an uncertain and challenged world.

Keynote speakers include ukulele virtuoso Jake Shimabukuro; Maya Soetoro-Ng, sister of President Barack Obama and assistant faculty specialist at the Spark M. Matsunaga Institute for Peace & Conflict Resolution; and Pono Shim, president and CEO of the Oahu Economic Development Board.

“Everywhere you look, there seems to be an absence of peace. Global terrorism, mass killings, tension between police and those they are trying to protect, mob mentality, domestic violence, and bullying and harassment in our homes, schools and workplaces,” Yajima said. “The 21st century has brought problems never before encountered to these extremes that threaten our human and planetary existence: climate change, disappearance of our natural resources, ineffectiveness of standard vaccines, terrorism, mass migration, extreme poverty and other issues. Our great tragedy in Hawaii is homelessness.”

Yajima said children’s museums have a role to play in addressing the challenges of their respective communities. Two years ago, during a conference on the mainland, Yajima spoke about Hawaii’s challenges with homelessness during a session that dealt with how tragedy affects children’s museums. Other participants talked about the bombing at the Boston Marathon, the sinking of the MV Sewol ferry in South Korea and Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana, she said.

“Growing evidence points to the importance of early childhood education and the role it plays in determining how successful children will be, not only in their academic careers, but in life in general,” Yajima said. “It is our responsibility to look for solutions together and collectively with others who share our conviction that we must do something, anything in our power, to help to give our children a more promising future. Our children are our future, and in helping to shape them, we shape our future.”

Despite previously speaking about Hawaii’s homelessness with industry peers, Yajima said the negative impacts of homelessness on the museum had grown so great by last year that she was initially reluctant to agree to host the peace conference.

“While I felt Hawaii was a perfect place to share the values of aloha with the world, at the time we were surrounded with literally hundreds of tents in the homeless encampments surrounding the center, and our physical plant was quite compromised,” she said.

By 2015, Yajima said, 300 homeless people were camping around the museum, and business was down by 30 percent. That summer, state Rep. Tom Brower (D, Waikiki-Ala Moana-Kakaako) was attacked and beaten there, an incident that helped attract intense political and media attention to the homelessness problem. Brower said he was walking through the encampments in part to assess their impact on the museum.

“I was embarrassed and also worried that we wouldn’t have the resources and staff to host an international conference,” she said. “Then I woke up to the fact that it was, in fact, a very opportune time for us to take a risk and step up because we here in Hawaii do have many important things that we can and must share with the world. And so I decided to rise to the occasion and do our part to help make the world a better and safer place. We felt that we could use the conference to begin to heal. ”

Kakaako encampment is down to double digits since the attack on Brower spurred city, state and private landowners to work through the jurisdictional issues that had allowed public lands to be usurped by private individuals. Despite the highly publicized homeless outreach, encampments still dot the sidewalk across from the museum. Homeless individuals sometimes still jump the fence into the museum’s garden at night, creating early-morning cleanup duties for the museum staff.

Also, Hawaii still has the highest per capita rate of homelessness in America. According to survey numbers released in June, the state’s homeless population tallied during a weeklong census in January was about 7,920.

“We’ve got much further to go,” Brower said. “Government needs to take homelessness much more seriously. People want places to stay, and if we don’t direct them to appropriate places, they will stay anywhere. It shouldn’t be compassionate disruption; it should be compassionate enforcement.”

Brower said the former homeless siege around the Hawaii Children’s Discovery Center was entirely preventable and due in part to the unwillingness of government to require homeless individuals to follow the same rules as everyone else. Continued enforcement is needed to ensure the museum and other public places remain open to all members of the public, he said. Education should start early, Brower said.

“We need to practice and teach tolerance, but we need to know the difference between right and wrong. Children live by example, and if they are growing up in a world where the parks are unsightly and the sidewalks are cluttered with campers, they may become immune to it as they get older and accept this lifestyle of anything goes,” he said. “Hopefully, we can start to lead by example, and the next generation of children will grow up to be problem solvers who are accountable to their behavior.”