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KeOlaMagazine.com | March - April 2019
life with deeper connection is what husband and wife team Yvonne Yarber Carter and Keoki Apokolani Carter strive for. With their creation of original music, their professions in land-based cultural education to steward native plants, trees, and ‘āina (land) in Hawai‘i, and their beautiful photo images, the Carters maintain a lifestyle that is both diversified and balanced. Yvonne and Keoki grew up on O‘ahu, and both attended Waianae High School, although they only knew of each other from a distance in what was a small rural community in the 1960s. Yvonne attended the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa during a culturally explosive time, and became a planner intern in the Waianae Model Cities Program, part of a nationwide federal anti-poverty and community leadership building experiment. “My career hasn’t been a straight trajectory,” says Yvonne. “With Model Cities, I learned about community building, activism, training in land issues, and about where our water came from. It was mind opening and provided a good foundation, but art and education spoke to me more than becoming a city planner.” Yvonne loved writing. While tutoring in Kalihi at Dole Intermediate, she saw students respond to new curriculum that was being pilot
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tested. The school added a new unit that included art, writing, and local culture. Yvonne says, “That spark fueled my imagination and desire to be part of something that could make a difference. I volunteered to help write or edit new materials which was just one of several projects at the UH Mānoa Curriculum Research and Development Group [CRDG]. Soon they offered me a contract to develop some small booklets for one of their units.”