A new generation of community storytellers emerged from the Kālele Storytelling Program in Kapālama Kai on January 24. Six young adults graduated from the inaugural cohort after completing 16 weeks of intensive media skills training.
“Kālele has been important just because I got to try so many things that I would have never, ever gotten to try anywhere else,” said Raydan Sedeno, Kālele Cohort I graduate. “I got to see what it would be like if I worked on a news set as a sports anchor. I got to learn what it would be like if I was a videoperson shooting for an anchor, or a news reporter.”
Over the course of the program, haumāna were immersed in all aspects of multimedia production, including pitching stories, pre-production workflows, interview techniques and the fundamentals of audio, videography and editing. The result: powerful, deeply personal stories that reflect the lived realities and voices of our communities.
The curriculum culminated in group field projects where haumāna put their skills to the test. For some, this meant flying to Lānaʻi to document the lived experiences of expecting mothers.
Kālele graduates Talia Agliam, Josslyn Rose and Tony Diaz documented the lived experiences of expecting mothers in this rural community. Mothers there shared how interisland travel was almost required for routine appointments, and delivery and specialized care are unavailable on the island.
“It’s a different beast when you’re [documenting] something so delicate and sacred and heavy,” said Diaz. “When you’re in the moment, you’re listening to the mothers speak about something that’s so personal and at the same time, trying to think of all the technical aspects of the camera, and audio, and all of that.”
Other graduates — Tahina Tomaszek, Von Kaʻanāʻanā and Sedeno — produced a feature titled Restoring Inoa ʻĀina, which focused on ʻāina-based identity and the cultural significance of traditional place names.
“In Restoring Inoa ʻĀina, most importantly, I hope that what most people take away is that in every name, whether it’s a birth name, whether it’s the name of a place, or wherever you may be, that there’s mana hold into it and that creates stories for us to learn and that should be passed down from generation to generation,” added Sedeno.
The story closed with a clear call to action, encouraging viewers to learn, use and correctly honor the names that connect people to place.
Rooted in community realities and cultural truth, these stories demonstrated not only the cohort’s technical skill, but also their ability to practice journalism with depth, purpose and clarity. For the graduates, the program was a confidence-building journey that challenged them to listen deeply, ask better questions and tell community stories with care and intention.
“[Kālele] gave me so many new aspects into this industry and our community can get involved in,” said Tomaszek. “I was so sure that I was just going to go into narrative film, and then I stepped into doing interviews with [our Kālele kumu] and it just felt like a light bulb went off and I fell in love with everything I was learning. I think [Kālele] just redefines what you can be, like it doesn’t put a limit on where you could go in life.”
All groups plan to continue to develop their projects, expanding their news stories into long-form documentaries. They then plan to submit the pieces to film festivals.
Kālele means to lean on or trust and is an invitation to ground ourselves in what supports us: our community, our values and our shared truths. The program was designed to help Hawaiʻi’s young adults uplift their voice and learn how to use it to tell compelling news stories that matter to our communities. Kālele is supported by Kamehameha Schools and Hawaiʻi News Now.
“We want to ensure that in the next generation and many more to come, there will be the storykeepers, the truth tellers, the people who use our experiences, our connections to our world here in Hawaiʻi to keep us Hawaiʻi, to keep telling our stories in ways that compel people, and inform, that bring people together around what we care about most,” said Kēhaulani Abad, Kamehameha Schools Vice President of Strategy & Experience.
“It’s not like a job where you come in and focused in on one thing. With Kālele, you can think about producing, you can think about journalism, you can think about sales, you can think about marketing, and the best part is there’s so many experts inside of this building who can teach all these aspects,” said Michael Harris, Kumu for Kālele with Hawaiʻi News Now. “[The graduates] walked away and they felt so much better about storytelling.”