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Posted on: Sunday, July 2, 2006

Palama Settlement

By Mike Gordon
Advertiser Staff Writer

Founded in 1905 by James and Ragna Rath, Palama Settlement brought social change to a neighborhood suffering from tragedy, poverty and a lack of proper healthcare, housing and nutrition.

The Raths came to Hawai'i from Massachusetts as social workers, recruited by Honolulu philanthropists to help the community.

Thousands of residents had been left homeless by a Chinatown fire and were living in ramshackle tenements. Banker P.C. Jones had built a small chapel in the Palama neighborhood under the auspices of Central Union Church as part of an outreach program. Jones hoped it would grow to better suit the needy in the community and asked the Raths to help.

The settlement movement of the period believed that social workers could do a better job in the community if they lived among those they sought to help. The couple had to overcome the community's initial suspicions.

But within a few years, the Raths were able to create an extensive public nursing program, low-cost rental cottages, youth athletic programs, day nurseries and day camps for children, a milk depot and a night school to teach English, history, civics and geography.

Ragna Rath went door to door to learn what the residents needed. James Rath was a tireless fundraiser whose efforts produced classrooms, a gym, a swimming pool, two "fresh-air camps" and medical clinics across O'ahu.

The camps provided camping experiences for children trapped in the tenements. James Rath would convince landowners to lend the settlement some property near the ocean or in the mountains for kids to use.

The settlement has lasted more than a century with the vision of the Raths — pioneers in Island social work — still a driving force behind its mission.