The ALICE Initiative was started more than three years ago and focuses on lifting ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed) Households, existing above the Federal Poverty Line, but still struggling, to greater financial and social stability. The 2022-24 ALICE® Fund is presented by Aloha United Way and Hawai'i Community Foundation. The partnership reinforces both AUW and HCF's commitment to collective action for a more equitable community. The ALICE Initiative also aligns with HCF's CHANGE Framework and the CHANGE sector, Community & Economy. The Fund invests in non-profit agencies collectively working to develop and implement impactful and scalable programs to help Oahu's ALICE households. The collective impact work will focus on increasing financial stability and savings, as well as increasing access to safe and affordable housing.
The ALICE Cohort below will specifically work to increase access to public benefit programs and job training and career advancement opportunities. Their work will also address decreasing household costs and developing matching savings programs and better access to loans. The collective impact model relies on shared goals, metrics, and tools to achive large-scale, systemic change. The cohort below will engage in community organizing, movement building and the creation of affordable housing opportunities by working together.
Total Distributed: $1.5 million
Total Award Recipients: 17
Here is the 2022-2024 ALICE Cohort:
Impact Area: Safe and Affordable Housing; Financial Stability and Savings
$85,000
Catholic Charities Hawaiʻi (CCH) will provide the Akahai E Komo Mai (Akahai), a financial wellness program designed to assist ALICE families to achieve household stability and develop the skills to build a pathway out of poverty. Akahai is an innovative approach that weaves lessons in financial literacy with mental health screenings and awareness together with Native Hawaiian cultural values. Over course of three years, Akahai will aim to provide case-management financial counseling to 75 households, and connect more than 1,200 individuals to supportive resources.
Impact Area: Financial Stability and Savings
$85,000
CNHA’s Hawaiian Trades Academy provides workforce development for economically and socially disadvantaged communities. The goal of the program is to raise the household income of families in Hawaiʻi. The academy will help ALICE households with job training, career advancement, and financial education; improve income and savings; and increase access to public benefit programs. CNHA understands the value in community-centered service and the importance of creating equity and access to living wage employment for the advancement of Native Hawaiians and all who call Hawaiʻi home.
Impact Area: Financial Stability and Savings
$100,000
To help ALICE families stabilize, Family Promise of Hawaiʻi is launching a new initiative called WAA (Working, Attaining, Achieving). The program will support financial stability and an increase in savings for ALICE families. The structure of the program is modeled after the Hawaiian outrigger canoe (waʻa) which requires a strong and resilient lead to set the destination and tone for the journey, as well as a competent and agile crew who work closely together to reach long distance goals. The program will work with participants to co-create individualized plans to identify educational and financial goals and map out a course of action to achieve them.
Impact Area: Financial Stability and Savings
$100,000
The Investing in Economic Growth Program aims to increase earned income and savings for ALICE households by providing $3.5 million in loan capital to low-income entrepreneurs otherwise unable to access loans. FTHF will also provide 550 entrepreneurs with business development through one-on-one coaching, supplemented with an on-line training platform of 200+ modules. FTHF’s technical assistance to small entrepreneurs often results in decreased household expenses, increased credit scores, and better access to resources.
Impact Area: Financial Stability and Savings
$80,000
Goodwill’s partnership with Komohale Services will offer an array of services on-site at Komohale’s affordable rental housing to address residents’ needs to get ahead, overcome challenges, and gain greater financial independence. The programʻs collaborative model will include evidence-based financial literacy workshops, financial coach referrals, digital skills training, job readiness training, one-on-one counseling, goal planning, assessments, and access to community resources and VITA services. As one of Hawaiʻi’s preeminent providers of employment and training services, Goodwill can identify needs, work across disciplines, and leverage multiple partners and initiatives to offer holistic wraparound services.
Impact Area: Financial Stability and Savings, Safe and Affordable Housing
$100,000
Hawaiʻi Appleseed will support the work of the ALICE Cohort by: (1) engaging the perspectives and voices of ALICE households to inform and pursue policy change; (2) providing policy research to identify effective means of addressing economic inequity; and (3) supporting collective action to achieve systemic change. ALICE families know better than anyone the economic challenges they face and how they might be overcome. Hawaiʻi Appleseed is striving to support ALICE households in engaging with policymakers to promote policies that help struggling, working families.
Impact Area: Financial Stability and Savings
$80,000
Hawaiʻi Children’s Action Network will work to build and strengthen the voice of ALICE families to advocate for policies and systems changes that increase household income and reduce household expenses. Key to this work will be expanding our existing efforts into a stronger Family Lived Expertise Initiative (Family LEI); building community engagement activities and platforms for involvement in policy and advocacy that is accessible to ALICE families; and integrating family voices at the center of our policy and advocacy work.
Impact Area: Financial Stability and Savings
$50,000
Hawaiʻi HomeOwnership Center provides classes, coaching, and post-purchase services to create sustainable homeowners. Program members are primarily low-moderate income and money management, and understanding credit is the foundation of our curriculum. HHC was in the last ALICE cohort to test a Financial Capabilities Pilot program providing a two-part money management workshop and a savings match up to $350 for those who saved and submitted a budget for six consecutive months. This proposal revises the program to deliver workshop sessions through an online, self-paced course, as well providing a new type of savings account to participants (not custodial accounts).
Impact Area: Safe and Affordable Housing; Financial Stability and Savings
$100,000
The Economic Self-Sufficiency for ALICE households and Below project will address the need for financial counseling, income supports, and career coaching to improve the financial capacity of ALICE and below households to achieve economic self-sufficiency. This will ensure these households are able to pursue economic opportunities and move into affordable housing projects as they come on-line, which will in turn reduce carrying costs for developer partners and position them to build new projects more quickly. Overall, this program will lead to increased income/assets and/or reduced housing cost burdens on ALICE and below households.
Impact Area: Safe and Affordable Housing; Financial Stability and Savings
$80,000
IHS’ Kahauiki Village (KV) program will continue to provide affordable, permanent housing and supportive services for formerly homeless families with earned income. In addition to direct services provided by IHS’ KV staff, partner agencies and community groups provide a variety of children’s education and enrichment, family strengthening, and parent skill building activities on site. Funding will support essential KV staff positions that support the basic social services provided by the case manager by developing relationships with new partners and opening doors for participants to enter their programs, building household’s tenancy skills to improve their ability to maintain housing tenure, and connecting families with resources, services, and skill building activities needed to maintain and foster family wellness.
Impact Area: Financial Stability and Savings
$100,000
INPEACE helps educate ALICE households through workshops and coaching centered around personal finances. Ho‘oulu Waiwai, which translates to “to build wealth,” is a community-based program that works to improve financial stability through education. It offers culturally relevant financial workshops, counseling with trained financial coaches, and matched savings to increase the financial standing of ALICE households. The program will also organize a Community of Practice for financial capabilities practitioners to collaborate with other agencies to strengthen ALICE work.
Impact Area: Safe and Affordable Housing; Financial Stability and Savings
$85,000
The goal of this project is to increase economic sovereignty among KKV ALICE households by providing, through KKV and its partners, a broader and sustainable array of economic supports, including an expanded public benefits enrollment team and new (for KKV) financial, job and educational guidance services, as a standard component of KKV programming long term. KKV will also increase community participation in ALICE advocacy/policy, through documented ALICE-related talk story events and—through these and other events—identify and train ALICE household leaders/activists in Kalihi, increasing their participation in policy/leadership venues effecting ALICE households.
Impact Area: Financial Stability and Savings
$100,000
This program supports the levers that move ALICE households toward economic stability and mobility, by providing legal information and services that address barriers to mobility. LASH services will remove barriers to increased and stable income, and address legal issues related to consumer debt. The program also supports collaboration with agencies involved in this ALICE cohort, to develop a cross-sector system that more efficiently supports the ALICE population.
Impact Area: Financial Stability and Savings
$100,000
PACT will provide immediate economic improvement for ALICE families and advocate for policy and systems changes that address the impossible financial burdens for individuals and families that are under resourced. PACT will invite and incentivize ALICE families to join Getting Ahead (GA) cohorts that will educate and support one another over 16 weeks to grow financially and in employment. Leaders from among the GA cohorts will be tapped in order to support their critical voice in community development. Concurrently, PACT will advocate in all sectors to change policies and practices that financially cripple Hawaiʻi’s working poor.
Impact Area: Financial Stability and Savings
$80,000
PIDF’s Kupa Aina (KA) natural farming project will expand its community partnerships to provide Hawaiʻi’s most at-risk/vulnerable youth with mentorship and vocational training opportunities, financial literacy education, and supplemental services to increase their independence and financial stability. KA will also donate food to ALICE households through community partnerships. In the long term, the goal is to train a new generation of farm workers who are invested in our Island community, while providing them with stable, skilled labor work, furthering our food security and sustainability. This support will cascade into better long-term outcomes for ALICE families island-wide.
Impact Area: Safe and Affordable Housing
$50,000
Residential Youth Services & Empowerment (RYSE) provides a continuum of support for Hawaiʻi’s houseless youth aged 18-24. Its new Tiny Village in Waiʻanae provides a long-term paradigm shift by providing ALICE and house-less youth with dignified spaces that are well integrated into the Hawaiʻi community. This pilot model village affords youth safety and respect while resolving a larger problem by creating a concert of tiny solutions in which the disenfranchised are invited back into the fabric of society.
Impact Area: Financial Stability and Savings
$125,000
Waikīkī Community Center’s ALICE Asset Building and Resource Access program increases financial stability for ALICE seniors and families by creating a seamless network of support that provides the holistic services needed to address their multiple challenges, stabilize their situations, and allow them to thrive. The program will stabilize ALICE participants financially by: 1) building an emergency fund through matched savings; 2) provide financial education so participants can continue to save and access financial services and credit after the program; 3) decrease household expenses by helping participants access public resources; and 4) addressing the holistic needs of participants through case management/resources coordination so they can stabilize their overall situations.
For questions about the ALICE Initiative, please contact Suzanne Skjold, Chief Operating Officer at Suzanne@auw.org.