Tagnawa Hawaiʻi
When systems fail our communities, we build our own.
Tagnawa Hawaiʻi advances gender, immigrant, and environmental justice through culturally rooted disaster recovery, community-led research, and intersectional advocacy.
Who we are
Tagnawa Hawaiʻi is a mom-led, feminist environmental justice organization rooted in Filipino and Ilokano cultural values.
We understand disaster recovery, gender justice, immigrant rights, and environmental justice as inseparable. By responding to the whole person and the whole community, we work alongside people long excluded from mainstream relief and policymaking.
From immediate response to lasting change.
What we do
Disasters do not create inequities. They expose and worsen them. Our work meets immediate needs while addressing the conditions that make communities vulnerable in the first place.
Community-Based Research
We document the real conditions facing Filipino and other marginalized communities so lived experience can shape recovery, resources, and policy.
Public Education & Advocacy
We build community knowledge and push for structural change across gender justice, disaster response, immigrant rights, and environmental equity.
Disaster Response & Outreach
We support survivors through language access, resource navigation, trusted partnerships, and direct community collaboration.
Our values
- Tagnawa (Mutual Aid & Collective Responsibility)
- Kapwa (Shared Peoplehood & Relationality)
- Wayawaya (Freedom & Self-Determination)
- Aloha ʻĀina (Love for the Land & Environmental Justice)
- (Intersectional Justice)
Community knowledge can change systems.
We are the first and only gender-focused 501(c)(3) disaster response institution in Hawaiʻi, leading the frontline application of gender analysis during disasters. Our research documents what conventional recovery systems overlook, turning the lived experiences of impacted communities into evidence for systemic change.
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