The Richard King Mellon Foundation will donate $1 million in grants to support recovery efforts on Maui after devastating wildfires on the Hawaiian island.
“I extend my sincerest ‘mahalo,’ or thank-you, to the big-hearted board of trustees at the Richard King Mellon Foundation,” said Hawaii Gov. Josh Green, a Pittsburgh-area native.
The money will be split between three groups, with $500,000 going to the Maui Strong Fund to support emergency relief in the form of food, housing and animal rescue; $300,000 to the Pittsburgh-based Brother’s Brother Foundation, which partnered with R.K. Mellon to support 2017 hurricane relief efforts in Puerto Rico; and $200,000 to the Maui Preparatory Academy for student scholarships. With several schools heavily damaged or destroyed by the fires, the academy has seen a significant increase in students seeking to enroll, according to foundation officials.
Green, who grew up in Edgeworth, made an appeal to the hometown of his youth.
“I bleed black and gold,” Green said. “I would be honored if the people of Pittsburgh supported the people of Hawaii.”
While the R.K. Mellon Foundation’s grants are largely focused on the Pittsburgh area, its conservation program is national. In the past, the foundation helped to conserved one of Hawaii’s native forests in 1995. Foundation support has gone to other natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the Haitian earthquake in 2010.
More than 115 people have been killed in the Maui wildfires, and many are also missing. The historic area of Lāhainā in western Maui was largely destroyed by the blaze.
There are a number of ways to contribute to relief efforts in Hawaii, according to The Associated Press, from large international charities to individual GoFundMe pages set up by and for Hawaiians who lost property or were injured in the fires.
