An estimated 90,000 people on Hawaiʻi Island are battling some degree of food insecurity.
The island has one of the highest rates of hunger in the state, according to a report compiled by major food banks in 2025.
A growing network of community organizations, many of which got their start or expanded their operations during the pandemic, is trying to meet the needs of local residents who are struggling to put food on the table.
Many of these groups are working hand in hand with The Food Basket — Hawaiʻi Island's largest food bank — and Hawaiʻi County.
The county, with support from The Food Basket, recently divvied up half a million dollars to 29 different organizations as part of their Community Food Security Project. The project is supported with funds from the federal American Rescue Plan Act.
The Food Basket's Audrey Metzman is the project's coordinator. She said that these organizations are well-positioned to come up with solutions that are tailored to the specific needs of their communities.
"The best, most effective work is going to come from the people in the communities making the connections," Metzman said.
Serving from Puna to Kohala
Puna Mākaukau distributes donated groceries once a month for up to 200 Puna residents. The group plans to use county funds to build an insulated cold storage room within the 40-foot container that volunteers use for food distribution.
Puna Mākaukau coordinator Claudia Ziroli said that the additional storage will not only help expand the hub's grocery offerings, but also make the community more resilient in the face of a disaster.
The Fern Acres neighborhood in upper Puna, where Puna Mākaukau is based, was spared during the devastating 2018 Kīlauea lava flows.
But Ziroli said that since 2018, Fern Acres has seen an influx of people, including many residents of lower Puna who were displaced by the eruption. She estimates that Fern Acres' population has doubled in the last seven years.
Puna Mākaukau has been working on its emergency plans to ensure the hub can feed old-timers and newcomers alike if disaster strikes again.
"We're one of those communities that has one way in and one way out," she said. "We really need to be able to feed people in a long-term, 72-hour response."
Two hours away in Hāwī in North Kohala, disaster preparation is also top of mind.
The Kohala Resilience Hub received a county grant to fund four canning classes. Director Kathleen Matsuda hopes to equip community members with a new skill to help them build out their emergency stores.
"You're supposed to be prepared for 14 days," she said. "You can have canned goods, but having food grown from the ʻāina is just healthier. You don't need electricity, you don't need the ice box. It can just be preserved in your cabinets."
The area is also home to the Kohala Food Hub, another county grantee. It runs several food access programs, including its Farm to Family program that distributes free local produce to 100 households.
Executive Director Maya Parish said that the need for their programs is growing.
"North Kohala is a 141-square-mile region which is served by only one supermarket and unreliable public transportation," Parish said, "Those kinds of things make it really difficult for low-income residents to access fresh, healthy food."
As of 2023, an estimated 41% of households in North Kohala were living below the ALICE threshold, meaning they had incomes above the federal poverty line but struggled to afford basic necessities like food.
The picture is even starker in neighboring Honokaʻa, where 56% of households live below that threshold.
The Honokaʻa Hongwanji Mission started a weekly potluck meal for keiki, kūpuna, and homeless community members shortly before the pandemic.
Hongwanji Board President Miles Okumura said the mission went from serving 70 meals a week in 2019 to 550 meals a week in 2025.
The skyrocketing demand has strained the mission's facilities. It plans to use some of its county funding to replace its kitchen floor, where the shuffle of volunteers preparing and plating meals has worn through the old linoleum tiles.
Okumura said the rapid growth of their potluck dinners has been overwhelming at times, but he doesn't regret starting the program.
"It's really a disturbing thought that there are kids that are hungry, and there are families that are sweating and worrying about putting food on the table," he said. "I would just encourage other organizations to do more, to do something small."
Unique funding model in Waimea
St. James Parish in Waimea in South Kohala has similarly outgrown their space.
The parish serves a weekly meal to 700 people, about half of whom are kūpuna. It's using county funds for coolers and freezers to store food, part of a larger investment into a new planned community hub, called the Gathering Place.
The parish's Tim Bostock has been drumming up support and donations for the hub. He said there's a lot of need in his community — but also a lot of wealth.
"We have a lot of people living hand to mouth," he said. "But we also have some millionaires and billionaires."
Waimea is a sleepy ranch town tucked between rolling green hills, but its ZIP code also includes beachfront homes and resort properties along the Kohala Coast.
Bostock added that during the pandemic, Waimea saw an influx of tech millionaires looking for a rural refuge.
"It gives us an opportunity to secure sponsorship and support and donations from those resources," he said. "It also gives us an opportunity to help these newcomers understand community."
The parish currently runs a program where people with means can donate $750 to sponsor one of the weekly community meals. Bostock said that while that model works well for Waimea, it might not make sense elsewhere.
"I know that this kind of meal sponsorship wouldn't be possible in other communities," he said.
On the opposite side of the island in Kaʻū, Marcia Masters said economic opportunities are few and far between. Some find seasonal work picking coffee or macadamia nuts, but Masters said it's often not enough to put food on the table.
"When people are laid off or off-season, it's difficult at best," she said.
Masters heads up the Nāʻālehu Resilience Hub. It started providing meals during the pandemic, and now serves about 140 lunches three days a week to people from Ocean View, Nāʻālehu, and Pāhala.
Masters wants to expand the hub's offerings to include farming and cooking classes, with the hope of helping families in the area become more self-sufficient.
"We really want to encourage our community to start thinking about what they can do to help each other," she said.
The hub received $25,000 from the county to help build out a commercial kitchen, which will be open to the public. Masters thinks the kitchen could be an opportunity for people who are looking to supplement their incomes by making and selling value-added goods, like lilikoʻi butter or smoked meat.
"So [we're] looking ahead to create a little bit more economic growth in the community," she said.
Funding opportunities to expand in West Hawaiʻi
In Kona, providers are weaving together food access and health care.
Amy Feeley-Austin, the chief operations officer of the Kona Community Hospital, said about half of the people who come through the emergency room don't have reliable access to healthy meals.
"Last year, our number one concern amongst our patients was food insecurity…and as many as maybe 40 or 50 people a day were screening as food insecure," she said.
The West Hawaiʻi Region Hospital Foundation, a nonprofit affiliated with Kona Hospital, has partnered with the community group KUA o Kanāueue.
KUA owns 30 acres of land above the hospital and is planning to open a new community kitchen, paid for in part with county funds, on that land this year.
Feeley-Austin said that will help the hospital provide food to-go for patients, like kūpuna who have been discharged and need prepared meals while they recover at home.
She added that the hospital has also been approached by local charter schools to provide meals for their students.
"On this side of the island, many of our charter schools do not have food programs because they don't have the infrastructure at their facilities to cook meals," she said.
Currently, Feeley-Austin said the hospital kitchen doesn't have capacity to cook for anyone beyond their patients. But through the new partnership, growth is possible.
"This is a really large plot of land, and we have a number of other community partners as well that are really interested in working with us," she said. "This is going to be a project that lasts for years and years and has, we hope, a very wide-reaching impact on the entire west side."
