Lyons & the Lambs
Recently named a Living Treasure of Hawaii, Patti Lyons, pictured here with JP Bennett and (from left) Alyssa Desamito with Bri-Ela Nakagawa, Bransen Farias and MJ Marsolo, has spent her career fighting for children and families in need
By .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
E-mail this story | Print this page | Archive | RSS |
Del.icio.us
|
Family Support Institute and chairs the Dean’s Advisory Board at the University of Hawaii School of Social Work. She played a key role in establishing Hawaii’s first Child Protective Service system, and was hand-selected by Consuelo Zobel Alger to be the inaugural president-CEO of the Consuelo Foundation (at which she served for 14 years before handing over the reins in 2004).
“She was worth about $150 million, and she left it all to the foundation,” Lyons says of the foundation’s founder and benefac-tress. “Before she passed away, she said,‘Remember dear, to pattern my life after St. Therese.‘And St. Therese said, ‘I want to spend my heaven doing good on earth. I want to shower my roses from heaven. And what matters in life is not great deeds, but great love.’ And she said, ‘Now dear, will you make sure to do that for me?’ And I’ve really tried to do it, tried to do exactly what she said.”
The Consuelo Foundation established the Ke Aka Ho’ona Self-Help Housing project in 1991 as a way to help low-income families on the Leeward Coast create their own neighborhood free of substance abuse and violence while building their own affordable homes. What started as eight homes on unused farmland is now a community of 75 families.
According to Lyons, 75 percent of the foundation’s support goes to the overseas nation, while the remaining 25 percent stays in Hawaii. Among those programs in the Philippines are the Baguio Shelter for Street Children, the San Carlos City Community development project, and Hawaii’s Healthy Start Program in the Philippines.
“The fun thing about that was building it, you know, establishing all the programs in the Philippines,” Lyons says, perking up with excitement as talk turns to her work. She adds that they are current-lypushing a planned parenthood program, a very controversial topic in a Catholic country.
But, then again, controversy is nothing new to Lyons. One hot topic that has her buzzing right now is the downsizing of Healthy Start by the Legislature. This year the child-abuse prevention program’s budget was severed from $12 million to less than $1 million, eliminating all but two sites statewide (one on the Big Island, one on Oahu).
“It worked,“Lyons states. “I mean, it didn’t stop 100 percent of the abuse, but the ones that they worked with, 99 percent did not abuse. And now, it’s gone ...
“Unfortunately, the rates of abuse are going up, not down,” she continues. “I hate to say this, but we’re a very violent nation. We discipline our kids by hitting them or shouting at them and telling them how awful they are.
“We’re funding the hiring of a person at the University of Hawaii School of Social Work who is going to do research for us for the next three years to find the answers to some of these questions: What interventions work? Why is there so much abuse in the U.S. compared to other countries? What can we do to stop it?
“All of this is to prevent or eliminate abuse and neglect.”
It seems Lyons has just begun to fight.
Page 2 of 2 pages for this story < 1 2
E-mail this story | Print this page | Comments (0) | Archive | RSS
Most Recent Comment(s):
