The Kohala Center respectfully engages the Island of Hawai‘i as an extraordinary and vibrant research and learning laboratory for humanity.
 
The Kohala Center is an independent, not-for-profit, community-based center for research and education. The Center works at the intersection of science and technology, civic engagement, public policy, and indigenous knowledge. In so doing, The Center builds teaching and research programs that assist communities on the Island of Hawai‘i, in the Pacific, and around the world thrive—ecologically, economically, culturally, and socially.

The Kohala Center operates only in partnership. Current project partners include: the Edith Kanaka‘ole Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Kamehameha Schools, the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University, the University of Hawai‘i, the Redlands Institute, the County of Hawai‘i, Cornell University, the Hawai‘i State Department of Education, Brown University, the Environmental Protection Agency, Kamehameha Investment Corporation, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, among many others.

The Kohala Center values the state of pono, in which individuals reach their potential, contributing their best to one another, to the community, and to the ‘āina (the land) itself, in exchange for a happy and meaningful life.