The Hawaiʻi Life in the Time of COVID-19 Project is designed to engage our Hawaiʻi communities in examining, articulating and sharing the impacts of COVID-19 upon our Hawaiʻi island ways of life, livelihoods, health, families, communities, education, values and outlooks for the future.
Would you like to participate in this project? We welcome your stories or reflections in any form. You can request to be interviewed or self-record your own audio or video oral history; share photos from your journal/diary entries or daily life; or submit poetry, mele, or other art you may be creating while staying at home and practicing social distancing.
We have designed this project so that our community can reflect upon, share, and document their experiences; acknowledge significant events; honor courageous acts and selfless sacrifices; and help to understand social and economic trends as they unfold.
It is important to document this island-wide and global health crisis in real time, track how to effectively and respectfully respond to it, map pathways of recovery, and project lessons on how to prepare and respond to future pandemics.
The Center for Oral History (COH) at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa is uniquely situated to provide an established and long-term platform for our Hawaiʻi families and communities to record their experiences living and working through this pandemic, drawing upon our cultural values and legacies.