Your Year-End Gift Can Shape Hawaiʻi’s Future
The Sierra Club of Hawaiʻi’s 2025 year end fundraising letters are hitting mailboxes! This winter’s letter from our Oʻahu Group Executive Committee member, Kiara Louise Bacasen, speaks to the challenges of this moment and the power of collective action—inviting you to join the growing wave of community members turning anxiety into action, and helping protect Hawaiʻi’s future through community education, organizing, and advocacy.
Please check your mail or read the letter below and make the most generous gift you are able to before the year’s end. 100% of your donation will stay in the islands and go straight to our grassroots work to protect Hawaiʻi’s ʻāina, wai, and communities, ensuring a livable and equitable future for generations to come.
Aloha,
You and I both know this hasn’t been an easy year.
From the dismantling of hard fought environmental programs, to government actions and rhetoric that strain our social fabric and test our very system of constitutional governance - the reasons for feeling an intense heaviness these days are innumerable. For those who share this feeling, know that I, and certainly millions of others, bear much of that heaviness right along with you.
Yet as we share and affirm our collective shock and outrage, we must remember that our times do not represent the end of sensibility, compassion, and humanity. All around us are people who strive for change and continue to fight for a better world, every single day. Especially those at the Sierra Club Hawai‘i Chapter.
You too can join our fight by making a gift today.
I may have just joined as a Sierra Club volunteer at the beginning of the year, but the Hawai‘i Chapter has been a place for me and many others to turn to. Here I have been able to turn anxiety into action and connect with folks who care as much as I do, and more.
We understand the necessity of organizing for The People better than those who organize for mere profit. We know that there is more to life than seeking personal gain, and we therefore show up, however imperfectly, to do our best for our community and our home, in whatever ways we can.
Now, as we approach a new year full of its own challenges and uncertainties, we’re counting on you to join our team by funding our efforts to protect these islands we love and call home. In 2026, we will build upon our strengths and aim to:
Coordinate climate actions with the networks and coalitions built through our various campaigns, engaging these diverse voices to target key decisionmakers who can help us pivot towards a more resilient, sustainable, and hopeful future for our keiki and future generations;
Provide direct action community organizing workshops to frontline youth and communities, including trainings on issue cutting, target identification, media strategy, and tactics, to amplify the power of community to confront environmental injustices and other social issues;
Ensure a just and sustainable water future, by educating communities and engaging legislative and agency decisionmakers on our unique water management laws, water rights, and the need to protect our most precious resource from ongoing issues of contamination, hoarding, and waste - from Red Hill to East Maui to Pōhakuloa.
Your gift, no matter the size, really does make a difference on whether we will be successful.
And we know we can be successful because despite the challenges we have faced this year, what we’ve accomplished together is truly incredible. In this year alone, we have come together to:
Protect our grandchildren from another Red Hill-type water crisis by helping to pass a law prohibiting the proposed siting of a toxic landfill directly above a drinking water aquifer in Central Oʻahu;
Uphold essential environmental safeguards by defeating legislative measures attacking laws that protect our food security, cultural practices, and public trust. Together, we also persuaded the Board of Land and Natural Resources to reject two inadequate environmental impact statements submitted by the Army for the continued bombing and use of sacred ʻāina for military training, and prevailed in a landmark supreme court ruling affirming the due process rights of water advocates and Hawaiʻi residents across-the-board; and
Uphold the integrity of the water code by coordinating with dozens of other organizations to ensure a true loea, or Hawaiian water management expert - Aunty Hannah Kihalani Springer - was nominated and confirmed to the Hawaiʻi Water Commission.
Your year-end gift will help us continue fighting for our future in Hawai‘i—protecting our ʻāina, wai, and the generations to come from the threats we collectively face. Will you join the thousands of everyday changemakers around you in making these goals a reality by making a special year-end gift of $25, $50, $75 or even $100 by our December 31 deadline?
Mahalo nui for your time, and wishing you all the best as we find the ways we can strive for more and strive for better, in all the ways we know how.
With love and gratitude,
Kiara Louise Bacasen
O‘ahu Group Executive Committee Member
PS. In this period of federal attacks, rollbacks and denial of the climate crisis, it’s more important than ever to stand with the Sierra Club of Hawai‘i. Donate $25, $50, $100 or whatever you can to support local work right here in Hawai‘i and build a firewall to protect our air and water!