Grants & Funding
Bishop Museum Awarded $49,999 by the Office of Hawaiian Affairs for “Extending Our Reach Project”
Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum is pleased to announce that it has been awarded a $49,999 grant that will help support the Native Hawaiian community through the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) Kūlia Grant Program. This grant will increase Native Hawaiian access to resources and programs through a project designed to improve the educational experiences of Native Hawaiian students.
The award will support Bishop Museum's project, "Extending Our Reach," that provides educational programs and meaningful experiences to a high percentage of Native Hawaiian students on neighboring islands.
"Bishop Museum's mission is to inspire its community and visitors through the exploration, celebration, and perpetuation of the extraordinary history, culture, and environment of Hawaiʻi and the Pacific," said Brandon Bunag, Bishop Museum acting vice president of programming and director of education. "As we mālama (care for) Hawaiʻi's living culture, providing opportunities for our communities to engage with our collections and to learn about their current and future relevance is a high priority."
"Bishop Museum has kuleana (responsibility) to steward and mālama over two million cultural objects. These mea makamae, treasures of our kūpuna (elders/ancestors), represent the unbroken genealogical connection we have to our kūpuna; they are our direct link to them. Bishop Museum educational programming is meant to interpret and bring to life these mea makamae in a way that is meaningful to the students we serve. For Native Hawaiians, this translates as connecting the generation of today to that of our kūpuna who lived hundreds of years ago," said Bunag.
The "Extending Our Reach" project provides resources for the Museum to visit classrooms on the neighbor islands and share programs such as: I Luna I Lalo, Animals of Our Islands; Holoholo, Transportation and Voyaging; Hoʻolaha, Plants and Farming; and Ahupuaʻa, Resources and Community. From learning about traditional voyaging practices, to the plants and animals of our environment, to understanding Hawaiian resource management, these programs introduce students to Hawaiʻi and its unique cultural and natural history.
In order to best maximize the number of Native Hawaiian students served, schools that have a higher percentage of Native Hawaiian students, schools that are within Hawaiian Homestead communities, and Hawaiian-focused charter schools will be prioritized in the project.
More information on the "Extending Our Reach Project" will be announced via Bishop Museum's Education webpage, BishopMuseum.org/Education.
About Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, the State of Hawaiʻi Museum of Natural and Cultural History
Bishop Museum’s mission is to inspire our community and visitors through the exploration, celebration, and perpetuation of the extraordinary history, culture, and environment of Hawaiʻi and the Pacific. The Museum was founded in 1889 by Charles Reed Bishop in memory of his wife Bernice Pauahi Bishop, a royal descendant of King Kamehameha I. Today, the Museum thrives as an educational center for the community and is widely regarded as the world’s premier institution for Hawaiian and Pacific content.
Bishop Museum’s vast collections of more than 25 million objects and specimens represent nine disciplines and include more than 22 million biological specimens, over 2 million cultural objects, 115,000 historical publications, and 1 million photographs, films, works of art, audio recordings, and manuscripts. These collections tell the stories of the cultures and biodiversity of Hawaiʻi and the Pacific as well as the proud legacy of scholarly research spanning 130 years.
Bishop Museum proudly serves more than 200,000 visitors each year, including 20,000 children on school visits. Guests are encouraged to pre-plan their trip to #HawaiisMuseum with its free digital guide, available through Bloomberg Connects.
To learn more about the Museum’s research, collections, exhibits, and programs, visit BishopMuseum.org, follow @BishopMuseum on Facebook and Instagram, visit Bishop Museum’s YouTube channel, or call (808) 847-3511. Bishop Museum is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
Bishop Museum is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action Employer, and welcomes applicants from the military, veterans, and those with disabilities. Learn about careers at Bishop Museum at BishopMuseum.org/Careers and on its LinkedIn page.
Bishop Museum Press is Hawaiʻi’s oldest book publisher and one of the first scholarly publishers in the Western Hemisphere, and has published over 1,200 titles and distributed over 1 million books in 72 countries worldwide. Bishop Museum hosts a restaurant and gift shop on campus, Tūtū’s Place by Highway Inn and Shop Pacifica by Nā Mea Hawaiʻi.