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G.I.F.T. Gatherings

What is a G.I.F.T.?

These are regenerative gatherings that introduce communities to heart-centered approaches of problem solving specifically related to public and community health.

In the forest

Facilitate ceremony and ritual

Allow for group connection

Plant seeds for solidarity

Build trust beyond ideology

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The Empowerment Manual is a comprehensive manual for groups seeking to organize with shared power and bottom-up leadership to foster vision, trust, accountability, and responsibility. This desperately needed toolkit provides keys to:
 

  • Understanding group dynamics

  • Facilitating communication and collective decision-making

  • Dealing effectively with difficult people.
     

The Empowerment Manual: A Guide for Collaborative Groups by Starhawk

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Super Health Food

Support local food sovereignty and healing systems rooted in Indigenous values  

Build resilient & sustainable coalitions

Return to the land 

Embody horizontal leadership structures

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"It was understood that the individual was a whole person and that the spirit, mind and body were not separate entities requiring separate treatment, as they are seen in the Western medical system. A person's health was also seen in relation to their place within community. Furthermore, cultural understandings of social functions and the importance of abiding by cultural protocols are also a significant aspect of individual and community wellness."

- Renee Linklater

Decolonizing Trauma Work 

Indigenous Stories and Strategies

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Fists in Solidarity

Reimagining community

Create compassionate agreements

Develop civic literacy

Cocreate policy & Calls to Action

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The insights of compassionate communication (Nonviolent Communication/NVC) are integrated into the context of decision making. Meeting format and design, including facilitation skills and processes that ensure that all voices matter in decision making. Feedback processes for evaluating the effectiveness of meetings, policies, workflows, and role performance support an ongoing learning cycle and continuous improvement, not just in production and delivery but in the embodiment of equality itself.

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Data from past GIFTs

Read what residents stated as their most urgent concerns:

  • Access to holistic childcare

  • Affordable housing for caregivers

  • Systemic and structural racism in healthcare system

  • Shortage of healthcare practitioners (doctors, nurses, therapist, social workers)

  • Increased wait times to see providers

  • Poor quality of care due to healthcare provider burnout increases patient deaths

  • Must travel to Oahu for specialty services/trauma/surgery

  • Expensive insurance coverage

  • Lack of natural, healthy foods to local community (Hawai'i islands import over 85% of foods)

  • Need more preventative care options

  • Spiritual healing vs. medical healing

  • Lack of access to land

  • Lack of support with breaking unhealthy habits/patterns/addictions

  • Isolation of the elder population

  • Better knowledge of plant medicine and herbal formulations

  • Greed as a motivator in providing treatment

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