This project was born 10 years ago when the Foundation’s Education Committee resolved to build a middle and high school on the North Shore of Kauai. Huge thanks especially to Lorraine Mull and Mary Paterson for their unwavering commitment.

The Foundation facilitated community engagement with in-depth listening sessions, small group meetings and online surveys. Constituents included business and agricultural leaders, teachers, kupuna, hula halau, cultural advisers, kumu and local nonprofit executives, and elementary school students. The school values were developed from the community engagement:

• Aloha ʻĀina—to practice a shared understanding of our kuleana for ʻāina
• Aloha Kanaka —to respect and mālama our community, our families, and ourselves
• Aloha i Ke Ao—to perpetuate pono practices to navigate cultures of the world.

Kumu Hula Devin Kamealoha Forrest reviewed documents dating back to the early 1800s and relating to the early 18th-century history of the moku of Ko‘olau and Halele‘a and the indigenous Hawaiians. He discovered that the area around Namahana, the 2,700-ft-high mountain that stands at the northeast portion of Kauai, was used as a retreat by chiefs and chiefesses. Thus, Namahana became known as nurturing, as the piko (life source) for Kilauea and Kalihiwai.

The Foundation named the new school Namahana with the hope that the school will become a piko for our community by nourishing the minds and spirits of its students to create the next generation of leaders for our community. The Foundation contracted with Big Picture Learning, an internationally recognized nonprofit that specializes in school development to assist in creating an ‘āina-based student-centered curriculum.

Namahana School is therefore deeply rooted in its unique social, historical, and geographic context, while facing broader challenges and opportunities in the world at large. Drawing strength from profound relationships with the people and places of Koʻolau and Haleleʻa, the goal remains to cultivate our children’s aloha for their home and transform it into concrete tools for stewarding the world they will inherit. A Namahana education is inspired by its singular setting, driven by the authentic interests and passions of its students, and shaped by cutting edge approaches to 21st-century teaching and learning.

Ultimately the Foundation devoted thousands of hours on research, planning, community participation and fundraising to conceptualize, map out and clear the path to get the school project off the ground. Conditional approval was granted by the State of Hawaii Charter Commission in June 2022.

Namahana School opened August 4, 2025!

Namahana School is the first and only public, tuition-free secondary school on the North Shore, so our children no longer need to endure an exhausting three-hour commute every day to get to school.

In 2022 North Shore Give officially passed the baton to the Namahana Education Foundation (NEF), the non-profit created to continue to fundraise, build, and subsequently operate the school. 

North Shore Give continues to raise funds for educational programs that support North Shore students, including grants to NEF as well as scholarships for students attending the Kauai Community College.