The Confabulous summit for Mānoa stakeholder organizations including the University of Hawaiʻi was held virtually on December 5. The summit was designed to help Mānoa organizations to get to know each other better through round robin discussions, scavenger hunts, social network mapping, and collective problem solving and more. The organizations shared their mission statements, needs, wants and suggested types of community service projects for potential collaborations with other stakeholders.
Mālama Mānoa partnered with UH Mānoa Department of Urban and Regional Planning (DURP) Professor Dan Milz, also of the Matsunaga Institute for Peace, to facilitate the virtual summit via Zoom. Graduate students from Milz’s PACE/PLAN 668 course, entitled Facilitation: Facilitating Community and Organizational Change, worked on a service learning project with leaders from Mālama Mānoa.
“We often hear so much about how online meetings have fall short; they’re awkward, they’re not great for public participation, et cetera,” said Milz, “but here we have a group of students who gave serious consideration to the question of ‘can we do it better?’ And, based on the reaction of the people who attended the Confabulous, the answer is a resounding ‘yes!’”
Milz also helped summit organizers to coordinate with Assistant Professor Suwan Shen, whose DURP undergraduate students worked on a service learning project to analyze the data from the Mānoa Community Needs Survey.
“This was a great opportunity for students in my facilitation course to design and facilitate activities in a real-world setting, with actual community leaders,” said Milz. “This has been a great applied learning project for them, and I’m grateful for Helen Nakano and her colleagues at Mālama Mānoa for making this happen.”
The participating Confabulous summit organizations were:
- Mālama Mānoa
- Hale Kokua o Mānoa Adventist Community Center
- Mānoa Valley Church Pre-School
- Mānoa Chinese Cemetery
- Mānoa Outdoor Circle
- Mānoa Heritage Center
- MoʻO School
- Mānoa Japanese Language School
- Church of Crossroads
- Streams of Life Fellowship
- Be Ready Mānoa
- Living Life Source Foundation
- BSA Troop 33
- Mānoa Public Library
- Lyon Arboretum
- Maryknoll School
- Mid Pacific Institute
- Mānoa Neighborhood Board
- Mānoa Elementary School
- Honolulu Christian Church
- University Avenue Baptist Church
- Mānoa Valley District Park
- Mānoa Lions Club
- Punahou School’s Luke Center for Public Service
- University of Hawaiʻi System
