808 Cleanups

AN ENVIRONMENTAL NONPROFIT ORGANIZATION COMMITTED TO RESTORING HAWAIIS NATURAL BEAUTY BY EMPOWERING VOLUNTEERS TO CONDUCT DECENTRALIZED CLEANUPS FROM MAUKA TO MAKAI, RESPONDING TO LITTERING & VANDALISM OF HAWAIIS NATURAL SPACES, SAVING HAWAIIS INDIGENOUS

Our vision is to enjoy a world with clean and safe beaches, hiking trails, and natural spaces withou

Goal One: Grow our App-Powered Adopt a Site program. Empowering community members to take actions big and small for cleaner, safer and stronger environments and communities.

Goal Two: Diversify the Hawai'i job market by creating new opportuntities in the realm of stewardship. There is so much work to do in restoring the culture and ecosystems of the islands.

Goal Three: Continue to diversify our programs with both reactive and proactive solutions. Through persistence we've reduced many of the original damaging actions we dealt with in early years and progressed.

808 Cleanups is centered on the idea of leadership development and empowerment on both the staff and volunteer levels. On the staff level, we encourage all members to pursue their interests and adapt it to the stewardship work we do on a daily basis. We provide a very flexible schedule, pay for all training and development classes, and encourage work/life balance for the health of our employees. For volunteers, our core philsophy is growing and supporting new leaders from the community; not waiting for "someone else" to initiate, but finding that leader inside each of us. This is why we provide seven day a week support all year to volunteers for their questions, management, free supply support and other needs.

Thankfully, our programs at 808 Cleanups have proven resilient in the face of the pandemic. We were able to continue all of our programs since March 2020. The most severe times were the lockdown periods when we couldn't enter parks, beaches and hiking trails to do stewardship activities. So we adapted by focusing more on neighborhood and roadway cleanups. We also reduced our group sizes and enforced social distancing and masks. With our Adopt a Site program, this even grew during the pandemic as it was already tailored to encourage individuals and families to conduct their independent stewardship supported by 808 Cleanups. Financially, we had past funders turn from us to more COVID-19 related funding, so in 2021 we really had to explore and diversify our funding avenues. The financial change has actually been the most challenging for us but thankfully we've had some amazing people and organizations step up to the plate, who know and appreciate the work we do and provide real support to our programs.