Barreling into the Hollywood Bowl this weekend before more tour dates overseas, Jack Johnson’s good vibes and connection to community extends well beyond the stage. The affable troubadour has donated proceeds from entire tours to charity, supported disaster relief efforts, and now, through one of several nonprofits he and his wife, Kim, support, is helping feed Oʻahu while teaching the next generation how to care for the planet.
The Johnsons’ environmental education nonprofit, Kōkua Hawaiʻi Foundation, recently announced that its eight-acre Kōkua Learning Farm has harvested more than 40,000 pounds of produce and welcomed more than 2,200 students since opening in 2019.
Established in 2003, the foundation works “to foster lifelong earth stewardship by connecting students, educators, and families with hands-on environmental experiences, local food systems, and waste reduction practices.” Its programs include ʻĀINA, a farm-to-school initiative; a “3Rs” program focused on reducing, reusing, and recycling; Plastic Free Hawaiʻi beach cleanups; and grants for educational field trips and projects.
The Learning Farm brings those lessons to life. Children and community members can see crops grow, explore the natural world, and learn how composting and other waste-reduction practices fit into the larger food system.
The farm serves students from kindergarten through high school, offers youth internships, and welcomes volunteers. Interns get their hands dirty planting and harvesting, composting, testing soil, and even keeping bees. Community members pitch in with everything from mulching and weeding to removing invasive trees, while businesses, clubs, schools, and other groups can organize private workdays.
“It’s really nice to be able to spend my free time doing something productive that’s for the community,” Johnson recently told Outside after a staff meeting at the farm. He was taking a break from a world tour supporting SURFILMUSIC, a documentary chronicling his life as a surfer, filmmaker, and musician.
“When I say ‘for the community,’” he clarified, “I don’t mean I’m doing some kind of service; I mean that I love to work on it, and my friends love coming down here. Sometimes our volunteer groups are literally just a bunch of close friends who bring chainsaws and want to help remove an invasive tree and do some heavy lifting. And then other times, when we have a community work day, like 100 people show up.” For a musician whose laid-back persona has practically become a genre of zen unto itself, Johnson seems to have found a fitting outlet: less preaching about living lightly on the planet than getting his hands dirty and inviting everyone else to do the same.
Johnson, now 51, sure doesn’t appear to be cooling his (very humble) jets all that much, But when he does, it seems to take pause for beautifully humble reflections like: “‘Whoa, we just did that.’ There’s a word in Hawaiian language, laulima, which [means] ‘many hands make light work,’ he shrugs off the assembly of community members harbored by Kōkua.
With 40,000 pounds of produce harvested and thousands of students introduced to the workings of a farm, those hands are doing some pretty good work to boot.
Related: Jack Johnson Celebrates The Surf Life On New Album, Documentary Film
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