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Ua Ikea: Dinner Event

Date: June 22, 2025

Location: Nāulu Farm


Arts & Native Species Fundraising Farm Dinner benefitting Hui Noʻeau and Maui Nui Botanical Gardens


Ua Ikea

The revelatory power of art and native species

In 2025, Mākena Golf & Beach Club will continue to host community fundraising dinners & golf events to support important Maui organizations. All funds raised go directly to the organizations being celebrated. This year's dinner event series will focus on the revelatory power of art and native species. Each organization will recognize up to 3 native species that are particularly reflective of the organization's work and vision for community well-being. In this way, we re-member as a community the reciprocal relationship of aloha with our native species - that they also gather us. The kick-off event will be Ua Ikea.


Ua Ikea: Dinner Event


Join us for a fundraising dinner event honoring local organizations Hui Noʻeau and Maui Nui Botanical Gardens. Our goal is to honor and recognize these organizations that nurture our connection to the web of life through our imagination and through tender, artful care. Our intention for this event is to come together with those we can lean upon, trust, and have confidence in to support and grow Life in the fertile soils of our precious landscapes and imaginations.

 

​This benefit dinner includes delicious food and drink, live entertainment by Marja Lehua Apisaloma & Wailau Ryder, and beautiful views of Puʻu Ōlaʻi and Kahoʻolawe beyond. Seating is limited and is based on a first-to-register basis.

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​All proceeds from the event will benefit the honorees. 



The Honorees:

Hui Noʻeau Visual Arts Center

Hui No‘eau is committed to ensuring equitable access to the arts. The Hui works closely with its partners to identify and address the needs of the community. Hui youth outreach programs eliminate cost and logistical barriers to arts education for students with the greatest needs. Programs target students in Title 1 K-12 public schools, children and families living in homeless shelters; as well as individuals from rural communities (Lāna‘i, Moloka‘i, and Hāna) who lack access to the arts because of geography, lack of transportation, or other barriers. Program expansion into Lahaina schools and community organizations has provided a creative outlet to support the mental health and healing of children and families impacted by the fires.

Maui Nui Botanical Gardens

The native plant botanical garden features more than 100 pre-European contact plant species that are labeled and have audio and other content through a self guided tour app, to explore traditional Hawaiian uses of each featured species and their native habitats. The funds raised at this event will be used to make the botanical garden more accessible to all visitors and create resources for Maui residents who want to incorporate native plants into their landscapes. Planting natives saves water, provides materials for cultural uses, and sometimes even assists with preventing extinction. The garden is replacing hazardous asphalt pathways, and will next be working towards repurposing old zoo enclosures to become resources for residential landscape planning based on specific Maui zones.






Lau Ke Aloha: Kinolau Native Species Art Creation Days & Exhibit:


Leading up to the Ua Ikea fundraising dinner event on 5/24 Aloha Makena Foundation will host a Lau Ke Aloha: Kinolau Native Species Art Day for Maui residents on Sat, 5/10 at Mākenaʻs Hale Pili.

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Art created from the 5/10 community event will have an opportunity to be displayed in a web-exhibit hosted on this website and during the Ua Ikea dinner. In an effort to reach more of the Maui community, short video tutorials of the artists teaching will be posted to the Lau Ke Aloha website. All Maui residents are encouraged to submit their art; attendance at the community event and/or watching the video tutorials is not required. For every piece of art submitted by a Maui resident to the Lau Ke Aloha website by 11:59pm on Saturday, 5/17/2025, $5 will be donated by Mākena Golf & Beach Club to each organization, up to 300 entries. For more information, see the Lau Ke Aloha webpage.

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“One of the absolutely vitalizing and humbling aspects of a Hawaiʻi worldview is to recognize natural phenomena and our native species as intimately connected to us, as family. The goal of these community art days is to nurture our role as younger siblings to our native plant family, to see our kino (body, form) as related to the kinolau (multiple forms) of this precious landscape. Through the skill and leadership of our Maui artists, we have an opportunity to express the respect and aloha that animates being part of an ʻohana (family, kin) by creating new native species art. In this way we live again a relationship that supports our ecosystem and Islandʻs wellbeing.” - Director of Mākena Community Engagement, Leahi Hall



The Plants That Gather Us



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