Get Mālama Hawaiʻi certified
Mālama Hawaiʻi is the visitor-facing side of the platform. A certified organization is surfaced to Hawaiʻi Tourism Authority partner sites and to any site running the widget filtered to Mālama, and can mark which of its opportunities welcome a visiting volunteer.
It is a certification, not a tag. You apply, a person at Kanu Hawaii reads the answers, and they decide. There is no switch you can set for yourself.
What it is certifying is that you are genuinely ready to host somebody who is here for a week and does not know your site: restrooms, parking, safety, group handling, and a clear account of what you do and why.
Applying
The Mālama tab on your dashboard holds your current state and the way in. A prompt at the top of the dashboard also points at it, and reads according to where you are: Start application, Continue application for a saved draft, or Update application when Kanu Hawaii has asked for changes. It goes quiet while an application is under review, because there is nothing for you to do.
The form itself is a stepper of eight sections, saved as you move between them, so you can leave it and come back.
| Section | What it asks about |
|---|---|
| Staff needs | Who runs the activity, how often it happens, and how many visitors you can host. |
| Groups | Whether you can take a group booking, and on what terms. |
| Physical layout | Where guests go on your site, and what they find when they get there. |
| Safety | Insurance, hazards, and what happens if something goes wrong. |
| Message and takeaway | What a visitor learns from you, and what they carry home. |
| Community relations | Being a good neighbour. Complaints from neighbours become an obstacle to hosting groups. |
| Website | What a visitor can find out before they arrive. |
| Intake | How a visitor books, and how their visit gets counted. |
After you submit
Kanu Hawaii is notified, and you get an email with the decision and the reviewer’s notes. Three outcomes:
- Approved. Your organization is certified. The badge appears on your profile, your dashboard, and your listings.
- Changes requested. The notes say what needs work. Update the answers and resubmit.
- Declined. You can apply again.
What changes once you are certified
- Your organization appears in the Mālama Hawaiʻi filter on the browse page, and in any embed restricted to certified organizations.
- The need form gains a Mālama Hawaiʻi visitor-ready switch, disabled until you are certified.
- The badge appears on your organization profile, on your cards in the organization list, and on your opportunities.
Certification is the organization, visitor-ready is the opportunity
These are two different claims and both exist on purpose.
Certification says you can host visiting volunteers. A given opportunity still might not suit one: a shift needing a truck and a week of training is not a visitor’s afternoon. So each opportunity carries its own Mālama Hawaiʻi visitor-ready mark, and a certified organization can offer some of its work to visitors and not the rest.
Partner sites filter on the certified organization, which is why a filtered list can contain an opportunity with no visitor-ready badge on it.
Who can do this
Owners and editors. The public explainer is at needs.kanuhawaii.org/malama , and the partner side of the programme, for anyone embedding the certified feed on their own site, is at Mālama Hawaiʻi.