Pedals and Pedagogy: Cycles of Hope and Health

Abstract

The Kalihi Valley Instructional Bike Exchange (KVIBE) is an innovative youth bike program housed in Kokua Kalihi Valley Family Comprehensive Services (KKV), a community health center in Honolulu, Hawai‘i. KVIBE utilizes a popular education model to raise the social consciousness of its youth participants, who are primarily working class, Indigenous, and native to the Philippines or the Pacific Islands, especially Micronesia. Initially designed as a bike repair program where youth could earn a bicycle through sweat equity, KVIBE has grown into an educational space that teaches bicycle mechanics as well as personal history and identity. The KVIBE curriculum incorporates a social determinants of health approach with the Four Connections Framework, an Indigenous health framework developed by KKV and the Islander Institute. This article shares details of this program, as a pedagogical model for programs to engage underserved and marginalized Asian, Pacific Islander and Native Hawaiian youth who suffer from displacement and historical trauma via colonization. Additionally, this article speaks to the importance of seeing marginalized youth not as an at-risk group but as agents in creating community health.

Genealogy: Pedals in the Health Center

Kalihi Valley Instructional Bike Exchange (KVIBE) is a program of Kokua Kalihi Valley Comprehensive Family Services (KKV). KKV is a federally qualified health center serving more than 10,000 patients in Kalihi, a diverse neighborhood in Honolulu, on the island of O‘ahu. In Kalihi, 93% of the 50,000 residents have Native Hawaiian, Asian, and/or Pacific Islander ancestry.¹ Many are immigrants who made Kalihi their first home upon arriving in Hawai‘i. Thus, KKV patients and staff speak more than 27 languages. Kalihi has a high percentage of residents in public housing and many live in poverty or face challenging family circumstances.

KVIBE was born in 2005 out of an Active Living by Design grant from Robert Wood Johnson Foundation that promoted physical activity in communities with high rates of diabetes. In its initial inception under the stewardship of Jared Christenot, KVIBE was a bicycle shop called the Bike Klinik where youth were taught bicycle mechanics. Youth could drop into the Bike Klinik and were given the opportunity to earn a bike by learning how to fix and maintain bikes and then volunteering at the shop. The goal of the program at this time was to model healthy physical activity. KKV believed that the idea of KVIBE would be relevant to this diverse community, and KVIBE was situated near the 2 largest public housing projects in Kalihi. The bicycle was chosen because bikes offered an affordable and environmentally friendly way of getting around the Kalihi community.

The Bike Klinik is seen as an extension of the health clinic, whose founder and former executive director Jori Watland believed that all community members play a role in caring for patients. The name the Bike Klinik was chosen in order to acknowledge that the shop is a space where healing can take place, and that bike mechanics can be healers too. Over the years, healing activities at the Bike Klinic have included mentoring sessions and culture circles, which are group sessions in which participants form a circle with intention to talk about a particular theme.

Today, KVIBE is managed by Kevin Faller and is based on the pedagogy inspired by popular education and various social movements. Popular education is an idea rooted in social movements for equity, including movements for liberation in Latin America, the Philippines, the United States, and Native/Indigenous movements for sovereignty.^2–3 Thus, KVIBE is a space where youth can practice sovereignty in their lives, with the motto, “to be the best version of yourself.” KVIBE encourages the youth who participate to be confident in themselves, conscious of their gifts, accountable to their community, and connected to the land.

The program has seen success in building bikes and helping youth to grow. According to internal KKV data compiled in a recent report, each year since 2004, 400 donated bikes were refurbished by youth, and about 4000 bikes were repaired though 9000 youth service hours. In a 2018 survey, 90% of KVIBE participants reported biking more often since starting at KVIBE, and 63% reported they have helped other youth to learn how to fix bikes.

This article describes the pedagogical grounding, program examples, and experiences of participants of KVIBE. We provide lessons learned for similar programs and illustrate some of the connections to health. Although KVIBE is not exclusively for young men and boys (as girls and young women also participate), one of our main funding sources guided our focus toward creating healthy spaces for young men and boys. In this article, we will focus on our work with young men and boys of Kalihi. In the context of #metoo, the importance of having healthy young men and boys in a community takes on greater meaning.

Pedagogy in Community Education and Civic Engagement

KVIBE engages primarily low-income, Indigenous youth from the Philippines and the Pacific Islands, primarily from Micronesia. The program's pedagogy comes from the popular education concept that education is not only a manner of delivering instruction, but also the “educational expression of a politics and philosophy” as described by Paulo Friere.⁴ In the program, youth become immersed in creating a narrative that places them as the central characters in a movement toward a more sovereign Kalihi. The pedagogy includes frameworks of healing, social justice, and addressing the social determinants of health.

One of the successes of KVIBE is the impact of its participants on the Kalihi community, including advocating in 2009 for a re-striping of bike lanes and reduction of car lanes on Kamehameha IV Road. The participants' engagement in petitioning and holding meetings with community members and press conferences ultimately led to changes made by the City & County of Honolulu to re-stripe and slow down vehicular traffic. Our community members have since shared their experiences of feeling safer with one lane in each direction (as opposed to 4 lanes total). Moreover, the youth have also engaged in civic policy in education, housing, health care, immigrant rights, reforestation, and gentrification. They have marched alongside other movements for sovereignty and social equity.

We also place sovereignty and creating a liberatory narrative at the center of the KVIBE program because of how many in our community have experienced the historical effects of colonialism. One of the lasting effects of colonization is to sever connections to critical sources of constant abundance—culture and land. For example, for many of our youth who were born in the Philippines and Micronesia there can be feelings of shame when it comes to identifying as Filipino and Micronesian. Even when this link is not severed, it can be distorted and one's perception of self becomes acculturated by the rites and rituals of colonial culture.

Education in the United States is often based on standardized curricula that reinforce the culture, economy, and spirituality of the colonizer.² In contrast, KVIBE offers a pedagogy of health that uses culture and history to acknowledge and name genealogy, and to see the future through an architecture of hope and resiliency.⁴ KVIBE seeks to reveal to youth the gifts — the skills, insights, and talents — received from ancestors, and the responsibility to hold themselves accountable to their community. For many immigrant, migrant and Indigenous youth in Kalihi, their path toward recognizing their source of abundance is the path towards reclaiming their health. The violence of colonization is swift and lasts for generations, but the reconnection to one's source of ancestral wisdom is slow and takes generations to sustain.⁵

Pathways of Healing

Mechanics of a Culture Circle: Name, Home, and Ancestor

Every day at around 3:30 p.m., just before the Bike Klinik begins assigning the youth their responsibilities for the day, the staff and youth come together and check-in with a culture circle. They sit in a circle, often led by a young person, and open with breathing and mindfulness exercises. They check in, stating their name and home, and call to mind an ancestor who will help the youth to be intentional. For example, “My name is Malcolm, home is Chuuk, Kalihi, Kam IV Housing, and KVIBE, and I'd like to bring my Grandma.” (A pseudonym is used to protect the identity of our youth.) When youth are first invited to the circle, they often do not identify their ancestral land and have difficulty identifying an ancestor. Their current lives exhibit a context of displaced peoples, distorted identity, and dehumanized living conditions. We speak together of inequitable conditions of Micronesian peoples affected by the Compact of Free Association, forced to leave their islands to seek medical attention in the United States due to illnesses associated with the nuclear testing in the Pacific. In addition, we speak of the lack of Hawaii's infrastructure to accommodate their living situation, including substandard public housing, sometimes with no hot water and pest-riddled living areas, and a feeling that the Department of Education does not always show cultural sensitivity, which affects the way they are treated in the schools and in the larger state of Hawai‘i. These conditions and misperceptions make way for racist and discriminatory remarks that are said openly in the streets, on the radio and social media, in the work place, with no sense of historical context.⁶ We believe our Micronesian youth are reminded of this reality almost constantly.

The culture circle allows for a recognition of their purpose/responsibility, their roots in a homeland, and their guidance by a genealogy of resiliency. The circle offers an opportunity to practice sovereign ways of naming themselves while breaking a generational amnesia that resulted from colonization and internalized oppression. Naming becomes a rite towards the goal of sovereign health.

Lanes of Healing: Men, Boys, and Patriarchy

Similar to initiatives to make Honolulu streets safer for bicycle users, KVIBE aspires for lanes in which men and boys can walk and talk without the tendencies of colonial patriarchy, which assumes the superiority of men over all things. Though KVIBE is open to people of all genders, it tries to articulate what it means to grow up as a boy in a working class environment. The fathers and male figures of these youth are often inundated with work and other family responsibilities; daily challenges can be exacerbated by immigration status and complicated family arrangements. Many immigrant Filipino and migrant Micronesian youth in our community are waiting for their fathers to receive visas to come to Hawai‘i and meanwhile look to find father figures in teachers, extended families, and sometimes in gangs.

Responding to this limited availability of male mentors, KVIBE encourages men and boys to find paths that do not replicate the abusive and violent tendencies of patriarchy. The goal is for participants to learn to question the architecture of colonial masculinity and stop the perpetuation of the distortions of manhood. Through programs on sex-trafficking prevention, trauma-informed care, Native Hawaiian practices for cultivating land, story-telling through cultural practitioners, and other activities, the young men and boys are given tools to address mental health and well-being. Moreover, the diverse languages and cultures of the youth are seen as their gifts, to use to create the manhood(s) they envision. KVIBE fosters mentorship and way-making by inviting male figures in hip-hop, poetry, mālama ‘āina (caring for the land), art, business and other sectors of society to model a modern masculinity that respects their own culture.

Four Connections Framework

KVIBE uses a framework developed by KKV and the Islander Institute called Pilinaha: Four Connections Framework.⁷ The Four Connections framework was birthed through formal and informal talk stories that centered on personal and collective health in Indigenous and island peoples. The framework is a process to understand the deeper practices and lived stories that promote health. The Four Connections are: connection to place (to have kinship with ‘āina); connection to community/others (to love and be loved; to understand and be understood); connection to past, present and future (to have kuleana, or a purpose in the world); and connection to your better self (to find and know yourself). The four categories are interconnected. One participant shared a story that illustrates the connections:

When I see people working together on the ‘āina, or in a fishpond, or gathering limu and doing traditional practices, I actually see them get physically stronger. They get connected to who they are, and to each other. And they feel power—not power over others, but power and control over they own destiny.

Lessons Learned

At KVIBE, we have learned that not every youth comes into the Bike Klinik excited about bike mechanics. Rather, what moves the youth to come into the shop is often practical: youth want a bike that they can earn through sweat equity. If they already have a bike, they come in to fix it. The second reason they come is spiritual. They are inspired by their kuyas (older brothers) and ates (older sisters) as role models or may be invited by their friends to be the best versions of themselves. The aura of learning and accountability permeates the shop and is shown on poster boards displaying reminders that the youth have their own agency to become more whole, healthier and more conscious.

Another lesson was that KVIBE does not have to do everything for everyone; there are other KKV programs equally passionate about holistically educating youth, and that health is a matter of connection. This lesson came to us after a KVIBE participant remarked, “I only come to KVIBE because I get to go to Ho‘oulu ‘Āina.” Ho‘oulu ‘Āina is a KKV program, based on 100 acres of land leased to KKV, that provides healing through native reforestation, farming, and connection to the land. Ho‘oulu ‘Āina is an Indigenous-based programming rooted in Native Hawaiian values with a philosophy that believes healing the land will heal the people. It is a dynamic program that holds space for all peoples searching for home and figuring out ways on how to hold a healthy tension between Western and Pacific epistemology and ontology.

A recent example was a 17-year-old Chuukese boy who came to earn a bike, but quickly realized (through time spent at Ho‘oulu ‘Āina) that he was most interested in learning to grow food and about Chuukese mythologies and ancestral traditions. Health for him meant a connection to the ‘aina and bettering oneself. Although the staff initially thought that KVIBE was failing this participant by not providing a good experience in the Bike Klinik, they realized that KVIBE could meet other needs by incorporating collaborations with other departments at KKV and with outside institutions.

Ho‘oulu ‘Āina became a partner with KVIBE, and now KVIBE youth go to Ho‘oulu ‘Āina one Saturday a month for cultural and healing activities. The KKV ROOTS program provided guidance to KVIBE youth on ancestral diets, and the Behavioral Health Department also became a connection to a better self. KVIBE has thus become a space to bridge youth to services beyond the capacities of our own program.

Finally, we have learned to keep parents and family members involved, and to share what their kids have been doing in the Bike Klinik. There are pressures on our youth to work for an income, and the KVIBE program may give the appearance that the youth are “just playing with bikes.” We strive for constant communication and updates so that the youth can gain permission from their family to participate in KVIBE. We have found that the majority, although not all, of the family members of our youth support their children coming to KVIBE.

Pedagogy of Presence: Walking Together in Wisdom

KVIBE aspires to be a space where staff and youth can journey together in search for wisdom. It is a learning space where knowing does not rely solely on the teacher, and being present is the gift of both teacher and student to each other. We communicate to our participants that the circle will always be open for them no matter what they have gone through and where they are in life. We provide a space where there is no judgment, and youth can always count on being heard.

In the last 2 years, we have begun to see former youth, now in their 20s, returning. They come back to be part of the check-in circles, realizing the need to be heard and to heal. For them, naming their wounds becomes easier in the circle. The circle, too, walks with them, in and outside of the Bike Klinik.

Implications for Public Health and Clinical Linkages

Health is more than checkups in exam rooms; it must intersect with programs that treat the individual as part of a community. When we invite a boy or young man in Kalihi into KVIBE, they will almost inevitably invite their brother or sister and eventually their parents into our space. One of our goals is to eventually invite primary care providers, so that the community may see that everyone is a care provider in some way.

Participating in KVIBE is a physical activity, and many youth begin to lose weight after several months of participation. But KKV has supported KVIBE throughout the years for the bigger picture goals, because of its engagement with youth and prevention approach to issues that affect the trajectory of their lives. KVIBE invites youth to become co-creators in their health as an important act in decolonizing medicine and population health. When community wisdom and participation are embedded in health clinics, an expansive and nuanced definition of health is created. The KVIBE program attempts to heal a community and restore a spiritual umbilical cord to its history. When the young men and boys feel they belong to a community that has overcome adversity, the narrative of themselves become medicinal, creating a path to turn generational trauma into regenerative mana (energy).

Conclusions

The KVIBE program is one pathway to holding a space for working class, Indigenous, and immigrant youth. It aims to uplift, affirm, and dignify their experiences and identity by focusing on their strengths from a history of hope and resilience.³ The Bike Klinik is situated in Kalihi and is thus narrowed through a Kalihi lens. Yet we believe there is some universality in the experience we have tried to create.

Of course, reading about KVIBE will always fall short of the experience of being in the space, breaking breadfruit, and sharing generative stories. We invite you to read, reflect, and then come join our circles in our Bike Klinik.

Abbreviations

KKV

Kokua Kalihi Valley Comprehensive Family Services

KVIBE

Kalihi Valley Instructional Bike Exchange

Conflict of Interest

None of the authors identify a conflict of interest.