We started with an invitation

Black August 2017 was our debut in the community

We invited our community to join us in celebrating Black freedom struggles and imagining how the examples of resilience and joy from so many generations can inspire us in how we live here, now.

The Pōpolo Project kicked off our first Black August observance in 2017 with community fitness events, arts workshops connecting Black land struggles and aloha ‘āina, and hosting intentionally Black spaces to have hard conversations about militarism, about Blackness in the Pacific, and what it means to grow up Black and Local and Black and Native Hawaiian.

Our first Black August was an experiment to see if there was enough of a thread that tied together our experiences in Hawai‘i that we could begin to hold space for a community to coalesce, rooted in our collective intentions and experience of making our homes in these islands.

To our delight, the response was overwhelming. After some coverage on Hawai‘i Public Radio and lots of sharing in social media, attendance rose at every event, folks from Lānaʻi and Maui reached out to tell their stories after hearing ours. People flew over from Moloka‘i to participate in Black August events. Black August tapped into an unexpressed need to see each other and to be seen.

That August, we formed our inaugural board of directors and began the process of incorporating as a nonprofit. One year later we were officially a 501c3.