Looking back at the last year, I also want to take a moment to share our gratitude. In disasters, necessity and a shared sense of service bring people together in unprecedented ways. Working for the Foodbank, I can personally attest to this, and it has been such a privilege to bear witness to how our community bands together when people need help. On a daily basis, I get to see the best of humanity, people helping people through some of our darkest times. Through blue skies and gray, our community’s aloha always shines through.

It was incredibly humbling to work alongside so many partners and community members during the response efforts. While we continue on a challenging journey to recovery, the wildfire response has strengthened new and existing partnerships that will bring long-term change. Hawai’i Foodbank has been steadily and intentionally weaving disaster preparedness into our operations and community partnerships for the past few years. We have been working with our affiliate food banks to strengthen our network in Hawai‘i, as well as building connections with our Feeding America sister food banks across the country. We believe that these accumulative efforts to work collaboratively and invest in one another will best strengthen food security across the entire state. The Maui response was perhaps the clearest view of what a connected network of food banks means for our islands. Hawai’i Foodbank helped Maui with staff, storage and distribution, and we were able to do this because we also had support from food banks up and down the west coast and beyond.