2nd Annual “Driving Change” Golf Tournament — Mid-Pacific Country Club, September 28
Habilitat has been operating on this island since 1971, when Vinny Marino started with eight people in a house in Kailua. Today it runs a long-term residential program from an oceanfront facility in Kāneʻohe, licensed by the State of Hawaii's Alcohol and Drug Abuse Division.
What makes Habilitat different is what happens after the hardest part is over. Residents don't just get treatment — they get a trade. Carpentry. Masonry. Culinary. Accounting. Office administration. Graphic design. Information technology. Every resident who arrives without a high school diploma leaves with one.
Habilitat is also, remarkably, largely self-funded. The Christmas trees on your neighbor's lanai, the catering at the event you went to last month, the fence around the property down the street — those are Habilitat businesses, staffed by residents learning to work.
Over the past decade, Habilitat's Christmas tree fundraiser alone has raised more than $1 million for Hawaii schools and teams.
We get asked to sponsor a lot of things. This one I said yes to fast.
Indevtech has spent 25 years building IT careers in Hawaii, on the premise that a person shouldn't have to leave for the mainland to build a serious technology career. The talent should stay. The opportunity to keep it should be here.
Habilitat teaches information technology as one of its trades. Same island, same problem, same answer — give someone a real skill and a real shot, and they build a life here.
I've known people who came through Habilitat — before they went in, and after. That's not an abstraction to me.
Habilitat, Inc. — Kāneʻohe, Hawaii. Serving the community since 1971.