The following is from the October 24, 2025 Pacific Business News article written by Nichole Villegas.
In the midst of recent funding cuts by the U.S. Department of Education, the Institute for Native Pacific Education and Culture, known as INPEACE, lost $1.6 million in federal funding — 85% of the operating budget — for its flagship program Ka Lama Education Academy, a program focused on growing teachers from local communities.
The program is not for recent high school graduates looking to become teachers, rather, it aims to build diversity in the teaching profession and give students teachers from their own communities. INPEACE does this by providing classes for current teachers to gain additional certifications or providing guidance and funding for people in the community to go back to school and earn a college degree to become a teacher in their community or pursue an adjacent career.
“The idea was to grow our own teachers to begin to address some of the educational disparities that were happening here in Hawaii, that are still happening here in Hawaii, with the recruitment of teachers off Island,” Sanoe Marfil, INPEACE CEO, said in an interview with Pacific Business News about why the program was first created in 1995. “Their focus was really to recruit teachers from community, who are in community, who want to teach in community, and to provide those courses and classes from the university system in community.” The program removes barriers for people to pursue teaching.
The $1.6 million loss in federal funding accounted for 85% of Ka Lama’s operating budget, and while the nonprofit is looking at other avenues for funding to fill the gap, if additional funding is not acquired by the end of the year, plans for staffing changes will have to be made.
Marfil said the first step in staff adjustments will be to move employees of Ka Lama Education Academy to other departments within INPEACE.
“If everybody wants to move in-house, and I don’t get any other funding, I would only lose one person,” Marfil said. However, they are pursuing a variety of other funding streams including applying for funding through Hawaii State’s $50 million emergency fund under Act 310, opened on Monday, which provides funding to nonprofits across the islands who have been impacted by changes in federal funding.
To read the full article, visit INPEACE’s Ka Lama Education Academy at risk under federal funding cuts – Pacific Business Newshttps://www.bizjournals.com/pacific/news/2025/10/24/inpeace-16-million-funding-cut-ka-lama-program.html
