President's Report

To follow up on one of the questions raised at the last Board meeting, Mary Anne Long had asked if lelo would administer a grant for her Ho'oponopono project, which is not 501(c)3. I advised her through Kahuku staff that while we would like to work with her and support her project, lelo is not set up at this time to administer grants for other organizations. Mary Anne indicated that she is not ready to apply for the grant and will work with our Kahuku staff to develop a proposal with us that will include lelo but not rely on us to administer it for her.

We are having our volunteer party this Saturday night. We will be including a video presentation and presenting awards to volunteer producers. We have already had over 220 rsvp's from volunteers planning to attend, which is way ahead of the 150 we had last year. All board members should have received invitations, so I hope you will all be able to make it.

We did a survey to determine if our advertising campaign this past year has had any effect on the community. Generally, awareness of ‘Ölelo has grown, with an increase in Olelo's name recognition from 57 to 61% since the survey was last done in 1998. Specifically,

13% recalled seeing our ads in Midweek and HNA.

Over half the viewers are aware of OAHU while 41% said they are aware of NATV.

One third indicated awareness of our telecast of Senator Akaka's hearings.

56% are aware that programming is produced by the community, an increase over 45% from the last survey.

Also notable is that 33% agreed that public access is "very valuable" to the community, up from 26% in 1998.

We received notice from the Boys and Girls Club four weeks ago that we would have to move out by the end of the year because they were awarded a grant that included a room full on new computers, and they now needed our space. We have been looking for new space. There are several possibilities, the strongest being Wai'anae High school, but we are still assessing the amount of renovation that would be needed. Worse case is that Wai'anae will move to Mapunapuna for a few months until a more permanent home is completed.

We have not yet finalized dates for the four board meetings next year.

This concludes my report.