Executive Director « Leaf Hawaii

Executive Director

LEAF’s founder and Executive Director, D. A. Santistevan has lived in Hawaii since 1980. He has worked in social service for many years. Prior to coming to Hawaii, he worked as Director of Military Families for the American Red Cross. He began serving the homeless community with a mobile lunchwagon, which won a First Lady Volunteer of the Year Award, as well as the J.C. Penney Golden Rule Award. More recently, his interest in feeding the homeless has expanded to a much broader long-term community-based self-sufficiency model. This includes not only temporarily feeding those in need, but helping to solve hunger and poverty one garden, one farm, one ahupua’a at a time, through a community food security initiative.

He entered the 2008 Master Gardener Program at the Urban Garden Center in Pearl City in order to enhance his role in fulfilling LEAF’s mission to help create food
systems in our communities statewide.

“The splendor of a seed sprouting into delicious life-sustaining food, is nothing short of a miracle, and that miracle must be shared with everyone, if we can even be considered compassionate human beings. It is very sad to see nations fighting over land rights, oil rights, and now over seed rights. This senseless quarrelling must stop, and progressive visionaries must come together, laulima, and plant and cultivate seeds of hope, love and trust for the benefit of every living creature, for the survival of the earth.”

My dream is to solve homelessness and hunger in America through sustainable permaculture farming and simple eco-friendly cottage industries.There is enough God-given land to produce more than enough food for everyone. We are supposed to be a great country but our greed to compete for the world’s resources has blinded us to such a great extent that we allow our own citizens to struggle so hard to survive for even the basic necessities of life. Even common animals do not struggle so much for their food, shelter, defense, etc. All that someone really needs to exist happily and healthy is fresh food, safe shelter, sufficient clothing and effective medicine. Through simple farming techniques of cultivating the soil, all these needs can very easily be taken care of. The dignity the homeless would experience by providing for themselves by depending on nature can be a remarkable example to the world how American compassion and a return to our roots, can lead the way in solving poverty. At present our food production policy is leading us into greater uncertainty and it is time to wake up and begin cultivating our own rich farmlands.

D.A. Santistevan