MALAMA Backyard Aquaponics for Native Hawaiian Families

Summary

MALAMA — "Mini Ahupuaʻa for Lifestyle And Meaʻai (food) through Aquaponics" — is a family-based, community-driven backyard aquaponics intervention rooted in Waimānalo, Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi. It grew out of the Native Hawaiian grassroots organization God's Country Waimānalo (later Mālama Waimānalo), which has taught home food production since 2005/2009, and was formalized as a research partnership with University of Hawaiʻi public-health researchers. A pilot study, published open-access in Genealogy (2024, DOI 10.3390/genealogy8030101), tested the program with 21 participants from 10 Native Hawaiian families over a three-month curriculum of seven hands-on workshops, culminating in a "Build Weekend" when families collectively built and installed aquaponics systems in each other's backyards. The curriculum integrates aquaponics technology with Hawaiian cultural teachings — ʻai pono (healthy eating), lāʻau lapaʻau (traditional medicine), mālama ʻāina (land stewardship) — and frames aquaponics as a small-scale echo of the traditional ahupuaʻa land-and-water management system. Results showed high engagement, zero attrition, significantly increased fruit consumption, and favorable trends in blood pressure and fish/vegetable intake. An interactive MALAMA curriculum with demonstration videos, PowerPoint slides, and laminated reference guides was developed after the pilot.

Guiding Principles

Food Sovereignty: MALAMA explicitly adopts the food sovereignty framework — the right of a people to define its own food system — reviving traditional food production rather than merely delivering food security.
Decolonizing Education: The program names colonization's dismantling of the Hawaiian food system as the root problem, embeds ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi language, stories, metaphors and protocol in the curriculum, and was community-initiated and community-approved (Waimānalo Pono Research Hui) before university IRB review.
Community Self-Sufficiency: Families build each other's systems together (the hui/cohort model plus Lima Kōkua peer mentors), creating durable neighborhood capacity rather than dependence on outside experts.
Circular Economy: Backyard aquaponics recirculates water and nutrients, mimicking the closed nutrient loops of the ahupuaʻa.

Learning Outcomes & Transferable Skills

Families gain Food Production competence (fish care, planting, harvesting, pest control), introductory Water Chemistry (water-quality management), and Systems Thinking about coupled fish–plant ecologies. The curriculum also develops Community Organizing skills through collective builds and peer mentoring, and Sustainability Literacy grounded in Hawaiian concepts of stewardship. Skills transfer to home food resilience, community health advocacy, and replication of the model in other Indigenous communities.

How to Replicate or Build On It

Read the open-access pilot-study paper (MDPI Genealogy 8(3):101) for the full curriculum structure, workshop sequence, recruitment approach, and evaluation instruments.
The replicable core: a multi-week, family-based workshop series; a collective Build Weekend; peer mentors with prior aquaponics experience; cultural teachings woven into technical content; and community approval mechanisms before formal research or rollout.
The interactive MALAMA curriculum (videos, slides, laminated guides) was developed post-pilot — contact the authors via the paper or University of Hawaiʻi / Mālama Waimānalo for access.
Comparable island program: University of Guam Community Backyard Aquaponics Systems (CBAS).

Considerations & Constraints

Cost: System construction and installation costs were fully covered by grant funding in the pilot; replicators need equivalent funding or low-cost DIY designs.
Skill Level: Beginner; designed for families with no aquaponics experience, multigenerational participation encouraged.
Space/Climate: Requires a home with sufficient outdoor space; designed for Hawaiʻi's tropical climate and species suited to warm water.
Tools Required: Standard backyard aquaponics materials (tank, grow bed, pump, plumbing); no specialized fabrication tools.
Ongoing Maintenance: Daily feeding and routine water checks for at least the 3-month commitment, realistically ongoing; participants asked for a longer program, indicating support needs persist beyond the curriculum.
Access Barriers: The curriculum materials are not published as a free download in a located repository (availability must be requested from the team); the program itself serves Waimānalo families; materials are in English with Hawaiian-language elements.

Prerequisites

None — the program is itself an entry point, though University of Guam Community Backyard Aquaponics Systems (CBAS) and general aquaponics primers provide complementary onboarding.

Primary Source

Chung-Do et al. (2024), "MALAMA: Cultivating Food Sovereignty through Backyard Aquaponics with Native Hawaiian Families," Genealogy 8(3):101: https://www.mdpi.com/2313-5778/8/3/101