Celebrating AANHPI Heritage Month & The Native CDFI Capital Access Convening

Forbes

04-04-2025

As we celebrate Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Heritage Month this May, we recognize the critical role Native Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) play in fostering economic resilience and self-determination across Indigenous communities. This year, Oweesta Corporation's Native CDFI Capital Access Convening (CAC) in Hawai'i brings together Native CDFIs, Native-led organizations, funders, investors, and partners to tackle pressing challenges, share strategies, and strengthen our collective commitment to financial empowerment.
More than just a conference, the CAC is a gathering of changemakers highlighting the success of the Native CDFI movement—and celebrating innovation, resilience, and the power of Native-led community development. With this year's event coinciding with AANHPI Heritage Month, it is the perfect time to amplify the voices and successes of Native CDFIs and Native Hawaiian leaders who are driving impact in their communities.
The Boyd family with the Hawaiʻi Community Lending team.
Hawai'i Community Lending Team
This year's convening is anchored in the theme: Resilience. Abundance. Kōkua. These values reflect both the lived experiences and future aspirations of Native communities. Resilience honors the strength of Indigenous peoples who continue to build through generations of displacement and economic exclusion. Abundance shifts the narrative from scarcity to prosperity, imagining what becomes possible with sustained investment in Native communities. And kōkua—the Native Hawaiian word for support—underscores our shared responsibility to uplift one another in the work of community-building and economic justice.
What Makes Native CDFIs Unique
Native CDFIs are mission-driven financial institutions designed to serve Native American, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian communities that have been historically excluded from mainstream banking systems. These organizations operate with a deep understanding of their communities, offering not only financial products but also culturally grounded technical assistance, credit counseling, and entrepreneurship training, among other services; responsive to community needs. Their work helps build generational wealth, strengthen Tribal sovereignty, and close persistent gaps in access to capital. In Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities in Hawaii, where the cost of living is high and access to traditional finance is limited, the role of Native CDFIs is particularly critical.
Why the Native CDFI CAC in Hawai'i Matters
For Native Hawaiian leaders, the opportunity to convene in Hawai'i provides a powerful moment of connection, strategy-building, and solidarity. The CAC creates a space for Native CDFIs from Native nations across the U.S. to learn from one another and to celebrate solutions rooted in cultural values, land stewardship, and economic self-determination.
Jeff Gilbreath, Executive Director of Hawaiʻi Community Lending, shared his reflections on the importance of this year's gathering.
Leadership Rooted in Place
The CAC is more than policy panels and funder roundtables—it is a space for cultural exchange, relationship-building, and sharing innovative strategies. That includes examples like community land trusts, grant-blended capital solutions, trauma-informed development services, and other solutions that reflect Indigenous values. Holding the convening in Hawai'i this year offers a chance for other Native leaders to experience firsthand how Native Hawaiian CDFIs lead with aloha and ground financial solutions in place-based values.
Pakini Loan Fund Team
Pakini Loan Fund
Pakini Loan Fund, having attended previous convenings in Alaska and New Mexico, expressed their excitement about this year's event as an opportunity to share their Native Hawaiian culture with their Native American 'ohana in a way that fosters deeper connections and community. They shared, 'With this year's convening in Hawai'i, we're excited to be able to share our Native Hawaiian culture with our Native American 'ohana in a way that, we hope, will build a sense of community and togetherness for our native cultures, especially in these exceptionally challenging times.'
If Native communities are 'invisible' to the wider community, then Native Hawaiians are often the 'invisible of the invisible' and holding an event in their homelands lifts their work up on a national scale.
The Impact of Native CDFIs: A Story of Resilience and Homeownership
A powerful example of this impact comes from Hawai'i Community Lending (HCL), which helped the Boyd family achieve homeownership despite facing financial hardship. Kevin Boyd, an entrepreneur, and his wife, Alycia, struggled during the COVID-19 pandemic. When they received their residential lease award from the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, they turned to HCL for support.
Kevin Boyd in front of his house during the building process.
Hawai'i Community Lending Team
Their path to homeownership was filled with financial barriers, but HCL provided the comprehensive assistance they needed:
Today, the Boyds live in their home in the Anahola homestead on Kaua'i, paying just $1,087 per month—a fraction of what they previously spent on rent. Their story illustrates the transformational work Native CDFIs make possible. Unlike traditional lenders, who often wrongly see financing in Indigenous communities as too complex or risky, Native CDFIs have the flexibility and willingness to bundle available resources into custom solutions for the best deals for their clients. This type of creative, hands-on financial structuring is exactly what sets them apart. Without them, many Native families would be left with few, if any, viable options for securing safe and affordable housing.
A Moment to Celebrate and Mobilize
As we celebrate AANHPI Heritage Month, we honor the leadership, creativity, passion, and cultural resilience in Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, and Indigenous communities across the country. Their work is about more than dollars and deals—it's about justice, identity, and community-led change.
The CAC is a testament to the power of culturally grounded finance and the transformative impact it can have on generations to come. It is also a call to action. It invites funders, policymakers, and investors to go beyond transactions and into transformation. Native CDFIs are not asking for charity—they are demonstrating what economic self-determination looks like when capital is in Native hands.
As Chrystel Cornelius, CEO of Oweesta Corporation, reminds us, 'Now is the moment to lean in - to lead boldly with culture at the center, and to ensure our communities have the capital they need to build the futures they envision.'
Here's to celebrating AANHPI Heritage Month with a vision that goes beyond recognition—toward investment, collaboration, and the shared work of building thriving Native futures.