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East Maui Resiliency Hubs

Resilience Hubs are community-serving facilities (often existing sites) augmented to support residents, coordinate communication, distribute resources, and enhance quality of life. They are intended to be locations that serve the community year-round while also being able to act as nodes of support during disruptions and in recovery. Resilience Hubs are typically best set up in a trusted physical space such as a community center, recreation facility, or multi-family housing building and have connection with other community spaces such as parks or gardens.

Maui County is working to establish Resilience Hubs in communities throughout the island. As part of this process, Maui has brought the leading expert in Resilience Hubs to Maui to support a collaborative process for designing and supporting Resilience Hubs. In April, Kristin Baja, the USDN’s Director of Direct Support and Innovation, spent three weeks in Maui working with community leaders and community members to structure their needs, ideas, and desires for Resilience Hubs in a way that ensures they can be implemented. This was an opportunity to ensure that our community’s vision and desires drive what the Hub will do and support in our community.

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On April 25, 2022, a handful of Kaupō residents met at the Kaupō Community Resource Center to talk story with Baja about our community’s needs and existing resources. For those who were unable to attend but would still like to share ideas, concerns, or thoughts regarding Kaupō’s resiliency hub needs, please email Baja at bajak10@gmail. com.

USDN's Director of Direct Support and "Champion for Change" Kristin Baja.

Kristin Baja (“Baja”) is USDN’s Director of Direct Support & Innovation. Baja is responsible for identifying, leading, and supporting innovative projects and trainings that actively transform local government processes and lead to proactive respect-based change. She actively works to identify and compost archaic and discriminatory practices and to provide pathways for change rooted in courage, equity, and justice. Baja is the originator of Resilience Hubs and wrote the white paper, guidance manual and operations manual for Resilience Hubs as well as set up the Resilience Hub website and community of practice. Currently she supports implementation of over 50 Resilience Hubs around North America.

Prior to USDN, Baja served as the Climate and Resilience Planner with the City of Baltimore where she led the city’s climate and equity work. She holds a Masters of Urban Planning and a Masters of Science from the University of Michigan and is actively working on a Masters in Biomimicry from Arizona State University. In 2016, she was recognized by the Obama Administration as a Champion of Change for her work on climate and equity. To learn more about resiliency hubs, check 11out: http:// resilience-hub.org/.

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