The Hawai'i Community Foundation and Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation issued the following comments about the award recipients:

Dale Bonar

As executive director of the Maui Coastal Land Trust, Bonar has been a strong advocate for supporting partnerships between nonprofits, educators, and landowners — an approach that has proved itself successful to all parties involved. Working with willing and private landowners, Bonar's efforts are helping to conserve, in perpetuity, significant ecological, agricultural, scenic, and historic qualities of Maui's environment from inappropriate development.

Gary and Kukui Maunakea-Forth

In 2001, Gary and Kukui Maunakea-Forth co-founded MA'O Organic Farms, a nonprofit, land-based movement of the Wai'anae Community Re-Development Corporation working to develop a comprehensive and living local food system which strives to fight hunger, improve nutrition, strengthen local food security, and empower low-income families to move towards self-sufficiency. The couple has found a great sense of pride in their work serving Wai'anae's youth and sharing in their successes and achievements. Always humble, the Maunakea-Forths remain grateful for the opportunities that were given to them and hope to be a source of inspiration for Wai'anae's young people.

Mike Gleason

Gleason has been dedicated to assisting people with disabilities for over 20 years. Whether as a coach, special education teacher, student services coordinator, counselor, vocational rehabilitation specialist, transition teacher, vice principal, board member, or president & CEO of a successful nonprofit organization he knows first hand what having a job, feeling supported, and feeling successful means to a person with a disability. Gleason's work for the Arc of Hilo is a demonstration of his life's commitment to helping those with disabilities secure the power to choose where and how they live, learn, work and play.

Rose Nakamura

In 1989, Rose Nakamura took on Project DANA, a Faith-in-Action program, which provides a variety of services to the frail elderly and disabled to ensure their well-being, independence, and dignity in an environment of their choice. With 55 volunteers serving just 110 elderly people at the time, Project DANA was a small operation run out of Mo'ili'ili's Hongwanji Mission. Under Nakamura's guidance, Project DANA has since grown into an interfaith coalition of 31 churches with 750 volunteers assisting thousands of senior citizens.

In a news release issued today, Kelvin Taketa, president and CEO of the Hawai'i Community Foundation, said:

"We are pleased to partner with the Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation to recognize nonprofit leaders for the significant and often less visible role that they play in improving the quality of life for Hawai'i's people, and who are truly the guiding forces in our community."

Established in 1916, the Hawai'i Community Foundation is a statewide, charitable services and grant-making institution endowed with contributions from many donors. Visit the foundation's Web site at www.hawaiicommunityfoundation.org for a listing of previous Ho'okele recipients and for more information.