Helping Hawaii’s Families in Need with Michael Wong

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Interview Transcription

ADRIENNE: 
Welcome back, and thanks for listening to the Team Lally real estate show, home of the guaranteed sold program, we’ll buy it. I’m Adrienne and I’m Attilio have any questions, you can reach us at 7999596, or check us out online at teamlally com,

ATTILIO: 
our next guest leads the Laulima Giving Program, a community initiative by keiki okaina family learning centers, through events like back to school, drives, adopt the family campaigns and the Laulima telethon with K H O n2 he helps support keiki kupuna and families in need across Hawaii.

ADRIENNE: 
Born in Kona and raised on Oahu, he has had a diverse career as an educator, coach and advertising professional before joining this impactful nonprofit. Please welcome back our guest. Michael Wong,

ATTILIO: 
Hey, Michael. I just want to make Yeah, Aloha. Welcome. Michael,

MICHAEL: 
welcome. Mahalo.

ATTILIO: 
Yes. I just wanted to say that we saved all the Hawaiian words for my part of the introduction, and we left all the English words for Adrienne’s part of the introduction. Okay,

MICHAEL: 
good to have Kamehameha in the house. Yes,

ATTILIO: 
there we go, Imua. But so we always like having you on the show, because I think, if I remember correctly, you know, these are the group of individuals that you guys are supporting. Are the ones that kind of like maybe in that gap, yeah, talk more about that kind

ADRIENNE: 
of in. At all? Yeah, absolutely.

MICHAEL: 
There’s a lot of people who are affected through things that happen in life, yeah, disease, accident, spousal abuse, single parenting, and they need help, but they don’t qualify for government assistance, yeah, so what we do is we have caseworkers who refer them to us. We reach out to that person, and we find out what the situations are, and we try to help as best that we can. Yeah,

ADRIENNE: 
so Michael, if someone is experiencing some kind of a hardship and maybe they don’t have a caseworker, are they allowed to reach out to you guys on their own, or does it have to be referred in by a caseworker.

MICHAEL: 
It’s a referral process. We would just need a teacher or a doctor or a caseworker who knows of their situation that you write about them, and that’s that’s how, that’s how we do it. So if they, if a caseworker would like to reach out to me and has a family in mind, or a doctor or teacher, I will send them the application link. They just have to reach out to me at my email. Michael.wong@Koka.org and I’d be happy to start the process.

ATTILIO: 
Alright, so Michael, what events are on the Laulima Giving Program calendar for this year? Talk about, let’s talk about the events to help

MICHAEL: 
Great, great. There’s a couple we are now entering, and are in the Adopt a Family campaign, where we help people like we just talked about right now. We help Kiki or kupuna or families who are struggling. And we have an application process that many people, maybe caseworkers, many people from the coca Ohana reach out to to families and ask them, Hey, can we apply for some help? For you, we’re not a large organization. We’re well, but we do the best we can to help. When we found out about the Maui fires and the devastation that happened there, we donated $250,000 to their rebuilding efforts. But we couldn’t do that unless we had support, like people at 711 Hawaii, Jn auto people like that, who give money for people that they may never meet, but they support those people through our Laulima Giving Program. Yeah,

ATTILIO: 
you know the coming up, yeah. So what else is coming up? Go ahead.

MICHAEL: 
Uh, coming up. A Laulima Day, December 7. That’s an annual event that we go to seven locations. We go to Windward Mall, Kahala Mall, kamakana, ali mall, Pearlridge center, Queen kahomano center in Maui, Prince kohilo Plaza on the Big Island, and also Lihue. Walmart, we collect funds and cash there. Nice. We’re so blessed to do that. It’s from 10 to four people come. They donate cash, toys, household items, just to help people who are struggling. Yeah,

ADRIENNE: 
and that’s December 7, you guys are going to get all those locations, yes,

MICHAEL: 
and schedule and news team are our emcees for that night. It’s a one day event, and it’s an amazing opportunity for people to give to others who are

ATTILIO: 
struggling. Yes, you know, local people are just going to call out to our local people and everybody locations on December 7, skip that case of green bottles and put the green money inside the donation mark

ADRIENNE: 
that D down on your calendar. December 7. Yeah, between you said 12 and four, right?

MICHAEL: 
Show up at the mall. 10 and 10 and 410. And four. Yeah. Get

ADRIENNE:
there early, yes.

ATTILIO: 
So the

MICHAEL: 
we’re gonna have palaus from across the island. Oh, nice, dancing, performing. And it’s going to be a day of just music, dance, giving, aloha. It’s a spectacular day.

ATTILIO: 
Where does, where does where? Tell us. Like, how does the funding come to you guys, organization? What are the sources

MICHAEL: 
the the funding that comes to us is basically through donations from business corporations. It comes to us from community people who just want to help as well. We have community people who give up to $3,000 because they think, well, instead of paying taxes on this, I’d rather write it off as donation nice that day. We can they can save on their side and also help people who are struggling as well. Yeah,

ATTILIO: 
would you like to share? I’m sure you would. But would you, would you share with us a recent Laulima story of success? Absolutely, absolutely,

MICHAEL: 
thanks for asking. But before we can we close out this year, we’re going to have telephone telethon on Thursday, December 19, and wait for it. Wait for it. We are going to be hosted at the beautiful, spectacular Kahala Hotel and Resort. They’ve been our sponsors for years, and this year they said, you know, why don’t you bring your telethon and have it here in our wildlife ballroom? And we said, Thank you so much. Jolie ball. And the team there have been so kind, and so we’re going to be there. We’re going to have volunteers take phone calls or people donating through their credit cards. It’s our last fundraising event of the year. Thursday, December 19. We’re going to be on on the air at KHON from five to 10 in the morning, and then again, from four to eight in the same evening.

ATTILIO: 
So you’re going to be like me, like Jerry Lewis,

ADRIENNE: 
live broadcast from the Kahala Hotel. Yes,

MICHAEL: 
live broadcast from the Kahala Kelly, Simon and and Lance Ray are our two hosts. Okay, and but the main people, the main people, the stars of the show are the people who call in and make credit card donation, nice

ATTILIO: 
and

ADRIENNE: 
December 19. So people that date, yeah. So we’ve got December 7 and December 19, yeah.

MICHAEL: 
So you got it, Adrienne, and you know what? I just wanted to thank. I want to thank Adrienne, Lally, I want to thank. Adrienne Lally, you guys kind to us, is helping us and supporting young people. We just want to thank you. You’re not just putting me on your on your radio show and and spreading the word that way, but you actually get in there and you make donations, which make a difference to the people. Thank you. Mahalo.

ATTILIO: 
You know, my dad said, Hey, boy, you gotta take a witch. So spread it around. He just told me that this morning.

ADRIENNE: 
And then, before we move on to the success story, I You briefly mentioned, like adopting a family. Can you just share what does that look like? Yeah, how does that? How do we get signed up for that so,

MICHAEL: 
so So basically, caseworkers look for families who are struggling, and we they approach them and say, We know of your situation. Can we? Can we ask for support from the Laulima Giving Program? And typically, you know, local people, they’re like, nah, nah, nah, nah. There’s other people who are more deserving, yeah. But what the people the caseworkers will do, they’ll say, you know, yeah, but we can help you. We’re not going to we can help financially. The situation arises. We can help with toys. We can help with household items. We don’t help with electronics. Our main focus is to is to donate things that you can yourself, use or have fun with your your friends or your family, board games, beach games, things like that. Many people donate bicycles. Dawson, Hawaii has been amazing. They just, they bring a moving truck and they and they sponsor like 10 families go after it. So people like that. But people can, can ask for simple families as well, single family, I say, go to our website, la Lima giving program.org, yeah, on the main page, there’s, there’s information about how you can be a sponsor of an adoptive family.

ATTILIO: 
That sounds great, because it’s, I think you know, for for my family and stuff we try, we’re getting away from buying all the gifts for our stuff, because it’s just more junk at Goodwill. Anyway, couple minutes later. So you know, something small, something thoughtful, I tell my kids, you know, only gifts I ever want for any occasions is you to write me a letter and tell me what your thoughts are, because I think that is priceless, as opposed to a text message or some Instagram posts. But we’re gonna donate. Team Lally is donating 100 tiny hammers, and you can use those to smash your smartphones and be present. So, but again, yeah, we don’t need more electronics.

MICHAEL: 
I can see you and Adrienne at Home Depot say, how many hammers,

ATTILIO: 
how many hammers we need? Tiny hammers so that the little elves can go to go to Christmas Day. We’ll smash all the smartphones so people can be present and say, Thank you. Thank you, Santa. Then welcome so

ADRIENNE: 
on to the success story. Yeah.

MICHAEL: 
Okay, okay, okay. This one is a good one. Macy’s Hawaii has been a partner with us for five, four or five years now, and they’ve donated $50 gift cards in the total value of $1,000 in the last couple years. And you know, we’re so grateful for that to us, that’s a lot of support. Yeah, um, well, last year, Macy’s Hawaii stepped up to $3,500

ATTILIO: 
worth of $50 gift card. Nice. So we

MICHAEL: 
were blessed. And so, so we thought, well, who can we bless these, this, these gifts with? Well, we thought of the group in Windward heartbeat, who is a special needs group, and they dance, they they celebrate. You know, they’re the probably the nicest people you’re going to meet are people who are special needs. And so we gathered 17 of them together. Macy’s Pearlridge opened their store at nine o’clock for just those people and their parents. So they got to shop the home. Entire store all by themselves. Yeah, and he was so cute, and came out and filmed the event. It was amazing. You can see the guys down there trying on their coats and shirts and ties and pants shoes, and then the girls are upstairs looking for prom dresses. And they came together in such a kind way. So mommy saw the people all excited, so they each got $200 but as you know, $200 doesn’t go as far as it used to. Yeah. And a generous heart said, you know, if any of you need more than 200 I’ll put it on my card. Yeah. And so everybody had such a great time. We took a picture. We thanked Macy’s Hawaii for their generosity. And so the Macy’s Hawaii people told me, You know what, we’re going to do it again this year, so they’re coming back again, and they’re going to maybe donate between the 3500 or 5000 but we are so blessed to see the young people thrilled about Peters from, yeah, as an annual, I know you know about it, yeah, Peters from is a special time where these special needs kids can come together and have a great time together.

ATTILIO: 
We’re watching the highlight re on the video of them shopping at the Macy’s. I mean, some of them was like break dancing and everything, doing some very so, so happy. It was awesome. Yeah.

MICHAEL: 
So they perform, you know, they perform, they’re dancers.

ADRIENNE: 
So if our listeners want to see that, we do live stream on Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, and you can see just how much fun these kids had with their with their Macy’s gift cards. All right, yes, yes,

MICHAEL: 
yes, yeah. Michael, you

ATTILIO: 
know again, repeat the how people repeat, what is the mission of what you all do down there, and then one more time, how people can help and support.

MICHAEL: 
Absolutely, the Laulima Giving Program is just one of the many community focused programs that we have. We teach kids, we teach teenagers, we teach kupuna, we have Hawaiian cultural classes. Laulima is the only program that’s not covered by our federal grant. Federal grants because we are under the Native American Indian Hawaiians are we get federal funding for the rest of the programs. Lau Lima, on the other hand, is the only program that depends on the generosity of the local community. Yes, our website is Laulima giving program.org, you can call me anytime, at 808-221-5281, I love working with people as they reach out to bless people who are struggling. Keiki kupuna, such an awesome opportunity for us to give back to the community that needs it so desperately.

ATTILIO: 
Yeah, and this is all interconnected with keiki OKaina. And if you guys, my kids went through keiki okaina when they were little, and that was a great preschool program and great interaction and all the stuff and support that they provided. So now I feel now they’re all circle, now that they’re old and they’re out there in the world, and I feel like, hey, it’s time for us to reach back and help the other families that can continue to go through these things. And like you said, these are people like, they’re not, they’re they’re not well off to be, to be so to be well off, but not so down and out that they can get this the government support, so they’re like, right, like you said, right in that gap. And you guys are, are filling that gap, filling that gap so people don’t fall through and can have an absolutely,

MICHAEL: 
well, you know, if you if people want to see the programs, yeah, of Keiki O Kaina, thank you for bringing that up at K O, k a, Koka, yeah.org. Yeah. You can see all the programs that we go into the prisons to help the men and the women reconnect with the people outside. Maybe they might have to fire some friends. Maybe they have to make some adjustments, yeah, so they don’t go back in. But that’s our passion. Is to make the community we have relationship classes for teenagers from 13 to 19 to teach them how to set goals for themselves so that nothing distracts them or knocks them off the path, and then at the end of that class, they get $100 Amazon gift card. Ooh.

ADRIENNE: 
And you know what? Yeah. No, my both my daughter and son, they went through the one for the teenagers, about having healthy, healthy relationships.

ATTILIO: 
Step number one, put the dang phone down. Step number two, don’t look at it again. But

ADRIENNE: 
it’s a great program, and it’s a nice incentive, because, you know, people are motivated for these amazon gift cards, but then, like, they go through the program and they’re like, Wow, I’ve gotten a lot more than just this

ATTILIO: 
guy, you know, teenagers, you gotta, like, trick them to do stuff, but then they’re like, oh, wow, I actually learned something.

MICHAEL: 
And you know what’s amazing for the parents, the parents either may not want to talk about, you know, really? Relationships, yeah, physical connections with people. But we talk to them in this and the students, so many times, are so anxious to talk about it, and they’ll bring up questions like, okay, let’s, let’s talk about that. But it’s important that they get the information before a pregnancy happens, because then everyone’s lives change. So we want to make sure they make good choices, good decisions, and have the best life possible. And that’s our goal. Yeah,

ATTILIO: 
because, you know, hey, parents, if you aren’t proactive in getting into these situations where they can be educated and better human beings, then then what are they left to tick tock. Absolutely, absolutely. And I know, I think we had a chance to interview the person that teaches the team program very

ADRIENNE: 
and I want to Yeah, yes. And I want to report that my my daughter is in a very nice relationship. I think they’ve been together about eight months. And, you know, being along together, it’s

ATTILIO: 
like dog years in teenage years, that’s about like, yeah, it’s like about two years. Eight months is equal to two years in teens, she found

ADRIENNE: 
a very nice young man buys her flowers, dinner and nice,

ATTILIO: 
healthy relationship. She’s

MICHAEL: 
very happy, right? Adrienne,

ADRIENNE: 
she’s happy, he’s happy. I’m happy. Yeah. All right.

MICHAEL: 
We also give a relationship, marriage or dating relationship. We give seminars, the weekend seminar, Friday night, all day, Saturday and Sunday afternoon. And we teach people about how to work together as a husband and wife, because when they do that, who’s the beneficiaries? The Kiki, yeah. So we want, we want people to stay together, work things out. Of course, it’s going to be times we might have a disagreement, yeah, but teach people how to fight, right? And we teach them how to disagree, right? And we teach them how to stay together and talk through things, happy, sad, always talking, but, yeah,

ATTILIO: 
stay in the relationship. Stay in the conversation. That’s important. I like. Know what I like, and it’s like a pebble in the pond, because it just, it just reflects out to the whole community, because you’re not seeing them going going nuts in the Target parking lot, but like working it out.

ADRIENNE: 
Thank you, Michael for always coming on the show and bringing value and reminding our listeners of ways to give back and get involved. And we’ll be excited to be a part of this program too. As

MICHAEL: 
thank you so much. I am always excited and energized whenever I talk to people like you. Thank you. You, you, you speak from the heart, and you, if you say it, you mean it, and if you mean it, you say it and you share. And all of us get to be better because of it. Thank you so much. Mahalo nui,

ATTILIO: 
okay, thank you. Michael, thanks. Michael.

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