Tagnawa Hawaiʻi
OUR MISSION
Tagnawa Hawaiʻi is a mom-led, on the ground organization that exists to advance gender, immigrant, and environmental justice through community-led research, intersectional advocacy, and culturally-rooted disaster recovery. We serve vulnerable communities long excluded from mainstream relief and policymaking, including Filipinos, immigrants, women and girls, and gender nonconforming individuals. We provide trauma-informed support, educational tools and workshops, and a platform for collective action. We do not treat crises as isolated events. We aim to dismantle systemic inequities by addressing the underlying conditions such as poverty, discrimination, and dispossession so that recovery becomes a pathway to lasting structural transformation.
OUR VALUES
Our work is grounded in Filipino and Ilokano specific cultural values, which guide our relationships, decisionmaking, and how we organize, advocate, and heal together.
Tagnawa (Mutual Aid & Collective Responsibility)
We practice cooperative action and reciprocity, rejecting individualism and transactional charity. We show up for one another because our liberation is intertwined.
Kapwa (Shared Peoplehood & Relationality)
We recognize that we are not separate from our communities; we are part of a collective whole. Our work is built on trust, connection, and the belief that wellbeing is communal, not individual.
Wayawaya (Freedom & Self-Determination)
We center the leadership and voices of those most impacted, ensuring that our communities define their own futures. We resist top-down solutions and work toward genuine autonomy
Aloha ʻĀina (Love for the Land & Environmental Justice)
As diasporic Filipinos with our own traditions of caring for and relating to the land, we honor the land and waters of ka paeʻāina o Hawaiʻi and the principles of aloha ʻāina. We support Native Hawaiian sovereignty and fight alongside Indigenous communities for #LandBack.
Intersectional Justice
We name and confront the overlapping systems of oppression, including racialized capitalism, colonization, patriarchy, and environmental racism, that shape our lived realities. We refuse single-issue approaches and work across movements for collective liberation.