Jan Harada said it saddens her to hear the harsh rhetoric surrounding a number of hot-button community issues, from housing to the economy — especially in a state known for its aloha.
People need to "treat each other with more aloha," said Harada, 41, president and chief executive officer of Helping Hands Hawaii, which assists underserved populations, including the homeless and mentally ill.
"The thing that burdens me the most is when I see communities fighting with each other."
Harada spoke to the Star-Advertiser just hours after attending Gov. David Ige’s Landlord Summit that encouraged property owners to rent to the homeless and just as the firestorm of criticism against Ige for his stance on welcoming Syrian refugees was beginning. While not referencing those specific issues, Harada spoke generally about the need for civility in dealing with critical community issues.
"It goes back to how do you engage even when you disagree — politely, professionally, respectfully," Harada said. "Can you sit down and have a conversation with somebody — without yelling, without using judgmental language — that you totally disagree with? Can you do that with aloha? Can you sit and try to understand (that person’s) story?"
Harada, who earned her undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Oregon, previously worked for the state Department of Health and later became executive director of Palama Settlement in her early 30s before moving to Helping Hands in 2010.
To relieve the stress of intense workdays, Harada practices kung fu and Chinese lion dancing. Her work ethic comes from her first mentors, her parents, now retired, who worked two jobs each to support her and her two siblings.
While she encourages community members to conduct themselves with more aloha, Harada recognizes her own shortcomings.
"I fail all the time at aloha. I talk about it all the time because that’s in me, but every day there’s something that I do that’s not aloha, whether I’m driving in my car and yelling at the person … who cut me off," Harada said. "Every day there’s something that I could do better."
Question: You are a lawyer, right?
Answer: Inactive status. I came home (after law school), I took the bar, I passed the bar and I just decided I didn’t want to practice. I got sworn in and everything.
Q: What led to that decision?
A: I went to law school with a desire to learn the skill sets I knew I was going to get from going to law school. There was a never a true desire (to practice law). I was maybe 50-50. I just knew that it would just open many other doors to me. … My dream has always been more about service, whether in nonprofit, government, private sector — some way to help people.
Q: Could you give me examples of how you apply those skills?
A: I’m able to craft emails and messages and written communication pretty quickly. … The education and the background has allowed me to do that in a way that’s tactful and strategic and sort of handles things in a more polite, respectful way. … Not just emotion, but really thought out. … I really find that the stuff that helps me be more effective as a leader are all the soft skills, stuff that I didn’t really get from law school. Those I learned from mentors.
Q: What are the soft skills?
A: You can be a good manager, but not a good leader. Understanding what it is to motivate your team. … Understanding how they communicate, how they receive feedback, what their five- to 10-year plans are and how to help them get there, the coaching and mentoring piece for the next generation of leadership. …
Especially in social services, as a CEO, I feel like you’re most effective if you can … easily sit down on the sidewalk with a homeless person who’s struggling and mentally ill or struggling with addiction. You’re going to smell stuff around you and all that, but be able to treat that person as a human and have that conversation while at the same time also equally being able to walk into the board room of a corporate CEO and have a conversation with them about support. You have to have the ability to have both of that. I think that’s super critical and that’s a softer skill to me.
Then also the ability to engage even when you disagree. People have a hard time when they disagree with the opinion of someone else or their competitor. You tend to too quickly demonize or personalize it rather than trying to take a step back and understand where that person is coming from, what their story is. … That’s a soft skill, too, being able to engage even when you disagree. …
Q: What made you move from Palama Settlement to Helping Hands?
A: It was an opportunity to broaden the scope of the things I could work on and help with. It’s a great organization and I really was excited to have that opportunity to make the move. Here there’s all kinds of services. From behavioral health, emergency assistance, a lot have to do with the homeless, which is big in the news now.
Q: Tell me a little bit about what the agency does.
A: The agency works in three primary areas, all vulnerable populations. … We provide language interpreters and written translation work for immigrants of limited English proficiency. Twenty languages, 24/7.
The bulk of what we do is medical, but there is some legal, some child welfare, domestic violence situations, educational situations. …
The second part of what we do is behavioral health services for adults struggling with mental illness and/or addiction issues, all of whom are poor or in and out of homelessness. By services that means case management — social work services to basically help them stabilize, make sure they are taking their medication, they’re making it to their appointments. If they’re housed, helping them to maintain their housing. If they’re not housed, helping them to look for housing.
Then we also have representative payee. We manage Social Security, disability and VA benefits for 620-plus adults with mental illness who can’t manage the benefits themselves.
Our human services side, I like to call it housing stabilization. So we have the Community Clearinghouse that provides basic material goods to low-income or homeless families for free. … We have Adopt A Family (during the holiday season), and Ready to Learn is school supplies provided for low-income and homeless kids. … We also provide emergency financial assistance. We do a lot of homeless rehousing and homeless prevention work. We help people who have fallen behind on rent or utilities that are either at imminent risk of homelessness or homeless and trying to get rehoused.
Q: Is there an educational component?
A: We try to help them sort of look at how they got to where they’re at, too. We do a little case management. Our whole goal is we want to help you in this situation but we also don’t want to see you come back. We also help with financial education and financial workshops so that they have better understanding of their finances and how to try to avoid it in the future. …
Q: Overall, how many people do you employ?
A: We have about 111 or so — 50-something full time and the rest are part time, hourly or on call.
Q: How is Helping Hands funded?
A: We’re about 55 percent government … a combination of federal, state and county. We are another 25 percent fee-for-service, which means services we provide that we then generate and we get paid for and that’s our own income. And then about 10 percent is private donations, grants, foundation stuff, corporate giving. Actually, it’s not a lot; it should be more. … we need to do better at that. The rest is miscellaneous income. …
We try to diversify as much as possible. … If you’re 80 percent and above government-funded, to me that’s like just asking for trouble because then if something happens to that major source of funding, you’re in trouble of surviving.
Q: What was it like when you first got here?
A: It was still the economic downturn. … When I got here we were in the middle of that crash. And in 2008 with that crash is when a lot of mental health services got cut. We took huge budget hits, as did other organizations providing mental health services. You reform the way that you do stuff. As a nonprofit you have to be smart about it and think, "What are your core programs?" and not mission-drift. Sometimes organizations … chase the funding versus really look at what the community needs.
Q: What kind of budget do you manage?
A: Our total budget right now is a little under $6 million. It varies depending on any particular contract years. In Hawaii we’re considered small to medium size.
Q: With the homeless situation, what role did your organization play?
A: The biggest role that this agency can and has provided is being a good collaborative partner. … Saying, "OK, you know what? I don’t care if we get the credit, but I want us to be a part of making this system healthier," whether it’s coming to the table during a discussion and giving ideas that aren’t just about driving more funding to our organization, but really just an idea that we think is great.
… Being a contributor to the conversation in a way that’s not service to self, but service above self. … It’s really just about how do we help folks who are homeless not be homeless and being able to have those conversations.
Q: You mentioned you just got back from the Landlord Summit. What were some of your observations?
A: I was so happy to see a lot of landlords in the room and property managers. We were so afraid that there would be 350 people in the room and 50 people would be (landlords) and 300 would be service providers preaching to the choir. But it was way more. … It was a positive that people were in the room and at least interested enough to come. The other takeaway is we tried to approach it in a way that wasn’t about, "You landlords, give us something." … I think it’s the start. I think it’s the first of many (meetings). You need to start having that conversation.
Q: We’re nearing the holiday season. What can you tell me about the Adopt A Family program?
A: In our Adopt A Family program … we have close to 600 families that are asking to get "adopted." That means matching donors up with the stories of the families and having them help fill the wish list
Every year our hope is that 100 percent of families get adopted and get something for Christmas. Some years, depending on donors, everybody gets adopted, but maybe the whole wish list is not filled. …
When you’re poor or you’re homeless, the holidays is the time of year that’s the hardest, because it magnifies tenfold your poverty. … People say, "Well, the parents just need to tell the kids you’re not going to always get (gifts) and they should just be happy." But you know, at 5, 6, 7, 8 when you’re not necessarily old enough to understand that lesson yet, it’s really hard to tell that to a 5-year-old and a 6-year-old. … These kids aren’t asking for fancy stuff. They just want something to open. They just want a little inspiration.
