Lokelani Intermediate School recently won the Cooke Foundation Beautification Award for their campus transformations and way of inspiring a kindness culture among students. The award includes grant of $5,000 to help complete and maintain beautification projects throughout the campus. The award is given each year to one elementary, one middle and one high school in Hawaii.
Hawaii Community Foundation’s Deborah Rice and Inger Tully represented The Cooke Foundation during the presentation, and school Principal Mark Elliott accepted the award. Rice recently returned to the school to help plant flowers as an intentional offering to the Friends of Rachel Kindness Garden; Friends of Rachel is a Lokelani program inspired by the national Rachel’s Challenge movement which aims to create and sustain safe, caring and supportive learning environments essential for academic achievement.
Every act of kindness on the Lokelani campus is commemorated by planting flowers in the Kindness Garden by student volunteers with Friends of Rachel (FOR) Club. The FOR Kindness Garden is part of a campus-wide beautification drive that accompanies other outdoor learning spaces created in collaboration with Grow Some Good, Rebekah Kuby of Maui School Garden Network, Kihei/Wailea Rotary Club and Goodfellow Brothers among other community groups.
Plans include an outdoor learning and community gathering hale, aquaponics, native plantings and edible schoolyards that inspire wellness and greater achievement in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) curriculum.
Photo courtesy of Grow Some Good
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