How A Keiki’s Aloha Foundation Shows Up for Hawaiʻi Families
There are few things more terrifying than hearing that your child is facing a serious medical crisis. But for many families in Hawaiʻi, the fear doesn’t stop there.
It’s followed by another blow. Being told you have to leave your island. Leave your home. Leave your support system. And face the unknown somewhere far away, often on the mainland, often alone.
For families from Maui County and across Hawaiʻi, specialized medical care frequently means traveling to Oʻahu or the continental U.S. One parent usually goes with the child, which means lost income back home. Meanwhile, rent or mortgage payments don’t pause. Utilities, phone bills, and everyday expenses keep stacking up. Add in the cost of food, transportation, and sometimes lodging in a completely unfamiliar place, and the financial strain becomes overwhelming.
What makes it even harder is that many of these families are invisible. They’re not always in the headlines. They’re not asking for attention. They’re just trying to get through the hardest chapter of their lives.
This is where A Keiki’s Aloha Foundation steps in, a foundation my family has supported here on Maui since I was a little girl.
Real Families. Real Support.
In 2025 alone, A Keiki’s Aloha Foundation has helped 30 families. Here are just a few of the Hawaiʻi families they’ve supported in recent months:
A five-year-old girl from the Big Island undergoing chemotherapy at Kapiʻolani Medical Center for leukemia. During treatment, she suffered heart failure and is now in the PICU.
A six-year-old boy from Honolulu who has spent a full year at Stanford Children’s Hospital undergoing testing, surgery, and follow-up care for a heart transplant.
A young Maui family whose peaceful home birth plans changed overnight when they learned they were expecting identical triplet boys with major medical complications. Pregnancy complications forced them to relocate to Oʻahu for specialized care. The boys were born prematurely at 30 weeks, weighing around three pounds each. Two months later, they were still in the NICU, reaching milestones one tiny step at a time.
These stories are different, but the thread is the same. Courage, uncertainty, and the weight of doing it far from home.
Bridging the Distance With Aloha
The ocean that surrounds Hawaiʻi can separate us, especially in moments of crisis. A Keiki’s Aloha Foundation exists to be the connector. To turn community care into tangible support. To make sure families don’t have to face these moments feeling forgotten.
The foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and is run by the same people who previously founded A Keiki’s Dream Program, which granted “dreams come true” to more than 1,600 children from Maui County who were facing major life crises.
A Keiki’s Aloha Foundation is truly grassroots. There are no salaries. No rent. No overhead offices. The team uses their own equipment and personal resources so donations go directly to the families who need them most.
Every contribution is fully tax deductible. Every dollar helps ease the burden for families navigating medical care far from home.
If you’d like to learn more, support their work, or get involved, visit www.akeikialoha.org or contact Darby Gill at 808-446-6662.
Because no family should have to face the biggest crisis of their life alone.
