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Community Enrichment Program

HTA’s Community Enrichment Program Supports Hawaiʻi’s Community Projects and Events to make Hawaiʻi a better place for our collective future.

The Community Enrichment Program (CEP) fosters community-based tourism projects to improve and enrich Hawaiʻi’s product offerings. It supports a diverse array of festivals, events and year-round programs in the tourism niche areas of culture, education, health and wellness, nature, agriculture, sports, technology, and voluntourism. These community-based projects provide unique, authentic and highly-valued visitor experiences and represents activities that are developed by our community, for our community, and are things the community is willing to and wants to share with our visitors. CEP encourages innovative tourism products.

In Fiscal Year 2026, HTAʻs Community Enrichment Program invested $1,330,000 to support 72 community-based organizations statewide to implement projects, festivals, and events from July 2025 to June 2026. For a list of these awardees, click here.

In addition, HTA’s Community Enrichment Program invested $1.5 million to support 60 projects across the state from July 2026 to December 2026.

HTA has partnered with Kilohana Collective, a division of the Hawaiian Council, to administer the program through ʻUmeke Powered by the Hawaiʻi Tourism Authority.

  • The application period for the July 2026 to December 2026 project cycle for the Community Enrichment Program Closed May 7, 2026.
  • The application period for the January 2027 to December 2027 project cycle is estimated to open in October 2026.

For more information about this program, contact Dede Howa at 808-973-2265 or via email at [email protected].