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Outrigger Steps in to Help with Extreme Makeover
Nancy Daniels
June 9, 2007
It was a monumental secret in the month leading up to the announcement on June 6, but as many of us now know, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition is in Hawaii this week shooting an episode for its fifth season in the show's ongoing effort to visit all 50 states. The Akana family of Kalihi was chosen as the deserving family to receive a life- changing gift, and host Ty Pennington, along with the production crew, Brookfield Homes Hawaii builders, and volunteers from around the community, are working together to change the Akana's lives by building them a new home in just one week!
Outrigger Enterprises Groups knows a bit about extreme makeovers -- case in point is the Lewers Street area, which Outrigger has transformed into Waikiki Beach Walk&trade, Waikiki's hottest new dining, entertainment, and shopping district. Outrigger also knows a bit about making dreams come true for people, having done so for millions of visitors to our islands over the company's 60-year history.
So, when we were approached by the producers of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition to help make a local family's dream come true with a brand new home, Outrigger stepped up to the plate and signed on as one of the show's sponsors by providing complimentary rooms to the hundreds of volunteers who have come to Oahu from the Neighbor Islands to help build the home.
Construction of the Akana family's "extreme dream" home started on June 7, and hundreds of Brookfield Homes Hawaii employees, partners, and community volunteers joined Ty Pennington and the design team to demolish the Akana's family's old home and build them a new one.
Theresa "Momi" Akana is the founder of a non-profit organization, Keiki O Ka Aina (KOKA), which provides free cultural education programs to those who would not normally be able to afford them. Until recently, KOKA was operated out of the upstairs portion of Momi's home but just recently, moved to a new location.
Momi was a single mom on welfare when she started the organization over a decade ago. She used her food stamps to buy snacks for the center and considered her welfare check her paycheck for the services she was providing.
Over the years, the Akana family's home fell into disrepair, a situation that was made worse when they were finally able to pull together a bit of money to hire a contractor to make repairs to their home, only to have the contractor leave in the midst of the project. Momi and her three kids tried to continue with the improvements to their home themselves but never had the money or expertise to finish anything properly.
Then, in 2004, a major flood in the Kalihi area washed away half of the foundation on their home. For the past several years, Momi and her family have lived with the fear of their home actually falling into the neighboring river. Today, Momi and her husband of a year live with their two-month-old son and Momi's three older children.
Brookfield Homes Hawaii was selected to be the builder, taking on the task of completing the home in 106 hours of around-the-clock construction. The Emmy Award-winning reality series' two-hour episode is scheduled to air on ABC in September as Extreme Makeover: Home Edition's fifth season premier for an audience of 15 million viewers!
