Culture, community, and climate

Hazelmae Overturf describes herself as a credit union lifer.

“I'll be in credit unions in some capacity, if they’ll have me, for as long as I live,” says the director of community impact at $147 million asset Kaua’i Federal Credit Union in Lihue, Hawaii.

She shares some of the many ways Kaua’i Federal is serving the island’s needs.

Q: What’s going on at your credit union right now?

A: We’re embarking on this cool endeavor that we’re shaping as we speak: an economic resiliency center. It's part branch expansion, and mostly a community-centered space where we’re bringing together players from different sectors who want to solve problems on Kaua’i.

Our purpose statement is “to steward a cooperative economy that honors culture, community, and climate.”

We’re using a place-based approach, and thinking about the culture that existed there hundreds of years ago and what it looks like now, including the issues we’re facing and will continue to face as the world changes.

We’re renovating and refurbishing an old furniture building, and making it come alive with the origins of this place. We’re learning about cultural practices, endemic Hawaiian species, and how people lived with such abundance in the past.

Q: Who in the community is involved?

A: We're bringing in government officials, cultural practitioners, and nonprofit community members who help us brainstorm, activate concepts, and showcase what’s happening across the island.

And since we're on a small island, a lot of our employees are involved in our communities. We started internally: What do we want to get out of this space? How do we identify our values, mission, and purpose? And how do we find like-minded individuals and organizations that want to align with us?

A lot of people on the islands are here for each other, so it wasn't hard to find partners.

Q: What issues are important to the people of Kaua’i?

A: What I'm learning during my time on Kaua’i is we all face the same human challenges. We’re making sure that culture, community, and climate are honored in our solution-finding.

Climate is a big priority for our organization because we’re on an island. We have a responsibility to make sure our communities and members are taken care of. For example, they used to call the catastrophic floods we have “100-year floods,” but now they happen every five to 10 years.

Food sources can also be difficult for the Hawaiian Islands. On Kaua’i, about 90% of food is imported.

And then there’s housing. Lack of affordable inventory has even impacted me personally. I had to start my work remotely because it was so difficult to find affordable housing on the island. Other folks are in circumstances that make it more difficult.

Q: Why is it important for credit unions to do this work?

A: Credit unions were built for this purpose. Specifically, the origins of many Hawaiian credit unions came about because different groups of people—like those who worked on the plantations during the sugarcane and pineapple eras—were underserved and not even allowed to enter banks.

They came together to create credit unions across the islands. Every day I think about credit unions’ responsibility to continue that legacy about coming together to take care of the greater community.

Q: What are you doing with the Hawaiian, Asian, Pacific Islander Credit Union Professionals group?

A: We’re gearing up to start a national organization. We’ve been meeting for almost two years, and it’s going to be more formalized as we get closer to the 2023 Governmental Affairs Conference.

We want increased representation. There's a lot of nuance and challenges within our cultures, and it's often not included in conversations or business decisions. This is a way for us to join together, amplify messaging, and increase advocacy and policy that can help these underrepresented groups.