By the Inside Outreach team · July 9, 2023If you’ve been to White Plains you know why families love it. Easy waves. Shade. Keiki learning to surf. It’s one of those spots that feels like old Hawaiʻi.
The road on the way in told a different story. Trash in the bushes. Trash in the gutters. The kind of stuff that rolls downhill every time it rains.
So we picked a Saturday and asked you to come. More than 70 of you did.
Second Saturday
This was part of something we started called Second Saturday. Every month we pick a community and serve it. Two hours, nine to eleven. Bring gloves, bring sunblock. We bring the bags, the water and some food at the end. And if you’re up for it, we hit the surf after.
Simple. No experience needed.
It was never just about trash
Here’s the bigger reason we were in ʻEwa. There was a homeless camp near White Plains, and River of Life Mission wanted to set up a hub there.
River of Life went from one location in Chinatown to over 40 hubs around the island. They don’t just feed people. They offer haircuts, help finding work, and a church family that will walk with you off the street. We love that. So we wanted to champion them.
Cleaning the road was our way of honoring that community before asking anything of it. Serve first. Then talk.
“Our goal is to honor that community by serving and cleaning up the streets.”
Daniel Molina
Where the trash goes
Storm drains on Oʻahu aren’t a sewer. When it rains, whatever’s in the street washes into streams and out to the reef, usually with no treatment at all. A bag of trash off a road in ʻEwa is a bag of trash that doesn’t end up in the water your kids swim in.
Why your ten minutes matters
Hawaiʻi sits in the middle of the Pacific, and trash from all over the ocean washes up on our shores. We can’t control what floats in from the other side of the world. We can control what we leave on our own roads.
Out at Papahānaumokuākea, crews estimate about 57 tons of marine debris pile up on the reefs every year. A lot of it is old fishing net. Nets and plastic hurt monk seals, honu, whales and dolphins. The less we add to it from land, the better.
What to bring next time
Gloves, sunblock, water, a hat and a good attitude. Bring the kids. They love it, and they learn early that taking care of this place is everybody’s job, not somebody else’s.
If you’re a church, a school or a business with a parking lot that could host a River of Life tent, reach out. We’ll connect you.
That’s why we keep doing this. Kailua. Waiʻanae. Kalihi. Mililani. Hawaiʻi Kai. Ala Moana. And if you can’t make it to one of ours, that’s fine. Every Tuesday is Trash Tuesday. Grab a bag and give it ten minutes wherever you are.
Mahalo to River of Life, The Real Life Network and every single person who came out. See you on the next one.
