Māla and Mālama ʻĀina: Hard work in campus garden brings volunteers a sense of pride
The Māla and Mālama ʻĀina work — cleaning up the gardens surrounding the Performing Arts Center — was not just giving back to the UH Hilo community, but the greater Hawaiʻi Island, too.
By Lauren Aoki/UH Hilo Stories. Photos by Lisa Canale/ Tropical Conservation Biology and Environmental Science/UH Hilo.
On Friday, April 24, students, staff, and faculty worked in the gardens outside the Performing Arts Center for a “Māla and Mālama ʻĀina” activity — to garden and care for the land — on the final day of the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo’s 2026 Lā Honua Earth Day celebration week.
Under the guidance and supervision of UH Hilo’s Director of Native Hawaiian Engagement Pelehonuamea Harman, about 50 volunteers cleaned up the area surrounding the theater building. The area was chosen because of its heavy foot traffic and its location for new student orientation events.
In the course of three hours, the group cleared overgrown weeds, planted new tī leaves, trimmed trees, and picked up rubbish and other litter.
“We wanted to collectively give that place some love,” says Harman, who serves as chair for the Mālama ʻĀina committee. She also recruited a few auxiliary workers to help where students couldn’t: powerwashing sidewalks and clearing plants that had begun to grow in the gutters on the theater’s roof.
“Huli ka lima i lalo, ola” (Hands that are turned down to work, bring life)
For Harman, the Māla and Mālama ʻĀina event provided an excellent opportunity for people to engage with each other outside the classroom.
“It’s important to take care of the (grounds) everyday, but I think Lā Honua just presents a more concerted effort from different communities and different parts of our campus to take care of our spaces that we engage with daily throughout the school year,” she says.
Lā Honua Earth Day’s theme for this year, “Huli ka lima i lalo, ola” (Hands that are turned down to work, bring life), centers on effort and community engagement, a sentiment Harman echoes.
“Many hands make the work light for the collective,” she says, emphasizing importance for the community to come together to take care of its own land. In this way, the Mālama ʻĀina event was not just giving back to the UH Hilo community, but the greater Hawaiʻi Island, too.
In doing so, the work also created a source of pride for its participants. Harman stresses how the love and care volunteers contributed that day will still be remembered even after the event is over; every time they pass the Performing Arts Center, they will remember how they came together and worked hard to make it nicer.
“Now every time you walk past this area, you know that you planted that tī leaf and you were responsible for making it look nicer. So it’s something to be proud of,” she says.
Story by Lauren Aoki, an English major with a minor in anthropology at UH Hilo. She is literary editor at the university’s student publications Kanilehua and Hohonu.
