In addition to conducting humanities projects for Hawai`i's communities, the HCH gives grants for humanities projects for the general public that are planned and conducted by non-profit groups. The Committee is providing, on a temporary basis, small grants for preservation and publications by non-profit organizations and research by individuals. Groups developing humanities projects should review the following general grant application information.

Grant application forms are currently being revised.  Please check back April 1, 2008.  For grant deadlines and current application forms please contact Kim Schauman, Director of Grants and Special Projects

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What is the HCH's Grant-Making Philosophy?

The mission of the Hawai‘i Council for the Humanities is to encourage public dialogue that explores human values, interprets human experience, promotes cross-cultural understanding, strengthens our community, and connects us to the wider world.

The HCH gives grants to projects that best promote its mission -- a better understanding and appreciation of the humanities among the general public in Hawai'i. This is based on the belief that the humanities are crucial to our personal and public lives. They:

• Inform us how the present is rooted in the past,
• Reveal the subtleties of our intellectual and cultural heritage that define who we are,
• Help us to understand other societies and world views in an increasingly interdependent world,
• Clarify and examine the fundamental beliefs that guide our actions,
• Analyze value conflicts that fragment our society, and
• Encourage us to ponder such enduring questions as the nature of justice, equality, truth and individual freedom and social responsibility at a time of diminishing resources and increasing technological complexity, where the sound byte is the common means of information dissemination and media "spins" color what we should know.

Of course, Islanders discuss concerns and issues regularly -- during coffee breaks, over lunch, around the dinner table. Sometimes, though, it seems that we are only engaged in the trading of personal opinions and cannot answer the "why" questions.

The humanities, through their trained scholars, help us to see through the complexities, looking at the "why" questions and revealing root causes and fundamental values and beliefs. In this way, each HCH-supported project helps to build a bridge between "town and gown," between the humanities disciplines and their trained scholars and the general public. The public gains information and perspectives from the scholars' fields of study, and scholars are able to relate their research to community concerns and interests, reaffirm and demonstrate the value of what they do.

Because humanities funding is strained in these tight economic times, the HCH is also supporting Preserving Hawai‘i's Heritage grants that preserve existing humanities resources and make these more readily available to our community as well as Research Assistance Grants and Publication Assistance Grants that foster or disseminate new humanities information and interpretation.