The Mission
A dialysis clinic. In Kaʻū. A promise kept.
The Promise
My father needed dialysis at the end of his life. There is no dialysis clinic in Kaʻū. To receive the treatment that kept him alive, he had to leave Kaʻū— driving 50 miles each way, three days a week, on a two-lane “highway,” for the rest of his life.
He was not the only one. He is not the last one.
Kaʻū is the largest district on Hawaiʻi island by land area and one of the smallest by population. The entire island of Oahu easily fits within the Ka’u district. Our kūpuna, the elders who carry the memory and the language and the practices of our people, are aging into a healthcare system that does not reach them. A diagnosis of end-stage renal disease in Kaʻū is, in practical terms, a sentence of exile from the land that raised you.
I promised my father, before he died, that I would build a dialysis clinic in Kaʻū.
That promise is now my work.
Mālama Kaʻū Foundation
Mālama Kaʻū Foundation is a 501(c)3 nonprofit Native Hawaiian Organization (NHO) based in Pāhala. It exists for a single, specific purpose: to build and operate a dialysis clinic in Kaʻū, in memory of my father and in service of the community that raised both of us.
The foundation is funded by the profits of Akamai Intelligence LLC, the SBA 8(a) certified defense contracting firm I founded after retiring from the Navy. This structure is not philanthropy. It is not charity. It is the model that Congress designed when it created the 8(a) program and the Native Hawaiian Organization framework — a federal recognition that economic self-determination, not handouts, is the path forward for communities like ours.
Profits flow from federal contracts → into the foundation → into the clinic → into Kaʻū. That is how we are building it. We are not asking for Federal or State of Hawaii’ grants, donations or handouts. We have built the funding mechanism to do this ourselves.
Click HERE for more information about our Foundation.
Why This Matters Beyond Kaʻū
Kaʻū is not alone. Across rural America, the same story repeats in different languages and different landscapes — on tribal reservations, in the hollows of Appalachia, across the Mississippi Delta, and in the fading farm and mill towns where the nearest hospital is a memory and the nearest dialysis chair is two hours away.
Rural hospitals are closing at the fastest rate in a generation. Dialysis deserts stretch across whole counties. And everywhere they appear, the outcome is the same: elders forced to choose between the treatment that keeps them alive and the land, the family, and the home that make life worth living. People do not just get sicker in these places. They get uprooted. They disappear from the map of where they belong.
What we are building in Kaʻū is a template. The economic engine we’ve built shows that a community can generate its own wealth and turn it into its own clinic — not a handout, not charity administered from far away, but a self-sustaining engine that keeps care, jobs, and dignity rooted at home. The specific debt owed to Native Hawaiians is ours alone. But the principle beneath it — that forgotten communities deserve the tools to care for their own people, on their own ground — belongs to every rural town in this country.
If these tools survive in Kaʻū, they point a way forward for all of them. If they are dismantled here, the loss reaches every rural community still waiting for its clinic to be built.
Where We Are Today
✓ Foundation chartered — Mālama Kaʻū Foundation established as a Native Hawaiian Organization in 2021.
✓ Federal contracting in operation — Our NHO’s subsidiary, Akamai Intelligence LLC, received its SBA 8(a) certification in August 2023, and is now generating profits that flows DIRECTLY to the foundation, and not through a holding company or a separate “community service” nonprofit.
○ Site planning
○ Clinic construction
○ Doors open in Kaʻū
How to Stand With Us
DONATE Direct contributions to Mālama Kaʻū Foundation. Every dollar goes to the clinic.
CONTRACT WITH AKAMAI INTELLIGENCE If your organization has federal contracting needs that align with our capabilities, contracting with Akamai Intelligence directly funds the foundation.
FOLLOW THE WORK Join the list to receive updates on the clinic, the foundation, and the policy fights that determine whether communities like Kaʻū can build their own futures.