Aloha e Christina,
thank you for your kind words! yes, the sense of self is so important in our development. There has been too much damage done for generations. and I wish your family found that something to heal and bind you all through generations.
I sent you a request to connect. Yes, let's stay in touch. Mahalo!

Aloha e Charles Zulanas,
Mahalo for your many questions! Let me see if I can answer all of them.
1. yes, elders are an integral part of our program; they always are in Native programs; otherwise, we wouldn't have a culture-based program. That's just given. Also, every time you see "cultural practitioner" mentioned, that's usually an elder or a person, who is considered as an elder by the community.
2. 4,000 is the number of confirmed children annually we serve through all of our partners. This number will increase as more partners are signing up with us to use our curriculum/lesson plans and materials. Yes, we have a way to measure all our impacts with our partners. There are a few things we track (Hawaiian langauge and culture scale and qualitative feedback on implementation, partner capacity building, and ability to meet their evaluation goals). However, the rest is dependent on each individual project. For example, with Asoka/RWJF - change of the narrative is measured through earned media and specific targets/goals/eval metrics, which are agreed on for that particular project. Kamehameha Schools and U.S. Department of Educaiton have their own metrics, some of which we add to our projects in order to meet their funding requirements on short- and long-term educational outcomes.
3. There are parts of our products, which we promised to release free through our website (grant funded). However, there are also materials, which we are developing, based on requests from educators and partner orgs. Those are fee-for-services. In some situations, the shared materials lead to development of more specific, in-depth learning tools.
4. We do have our own metrics, most of them relate to practice and applicaiton of both languages and body of knowledge, basically how well people apply the knowledge to every day lives. Our metrics cover socio-emotional development, relathionships, integration with community, dual literacy, and academic success. We also collect qualitative feedback from our family members on the impact of our program on their work/family situation, educaitonal gains, increase in work hours, etc. There are decades of research of Native/Indigenous education by Native researchers. Short of going into the underlying philosophies and debates on educaitonal evaluation in culture-based programs, the answer is yes, we do have metrics, which we have been working with over the last decade, as our program originated before we started this organization. As any research field, it's emerging. So we are incorporating recent development from other Native/Indigenous/Aboriginal and Western models.
Hope I answered your questions, mahalo!

Aloha e Céline Steer,
This is a very interesting idea! It seems that non-profits and other grassroots initiatives are major players in your future project. However, their voices are not coming through in terms of what they need, or at least I am not finding it in your narrative. We are a grassroots non-profit organization; this platform is coming through as another layer of gatekeeping and a part of a outdated top-down approach to funding. In the current field of giving, it's non-profits that drive systems change in equitable funding and resource distribution, not funders. Therefore, creating a process around funders' needs seems to be out of touch with the current systems/power change dynamics. But I might be missing information. Could you maybe speak to what would attract non-profits to participate in this platform? What did non-profits say about this project during your user feedback? Mahalo!