By Erity Teave Hey | President, Mana Rapa Nui Foundation · Vice President, Parlamento Rapa Nui | July 2025

In July 2025, the Mana Rapa Nui Foundation provided a grant to the Corporacion de Resguardo Cultural Kahu Kahu ‘o Hera — supporting youth programs that pass Rapa Nui cultural values to the next generation.

About the Corporacion de Resguardo Cultural Kahu Kahu ‘o Hera

The Corporacion de Resguardo Cultural Kahu Kahu ‘o Hera is a Rapa Nui community organization dedicated to safeguarding the island’s cultural heritage. Named for Hotu Matuʻa — the founding Ariki who, according to Rapa Nui oral tradition, led the first Polynesian settlers to the island — the Corporación carries forward that ancestral responsibility: to protect what was brought, what was made, and what must be passed on.

What the Grant Funded

The Mana Rapa Nui Foundation’s grant supported the Corporación’s youth programs dedicated to preserving Rapa Nui cultural values — ensuring that the island’s traditions, language, and identity are carried forward by its young people.

Why This Partnership Matters

The survival of Rapa Nui culture does not depend on archives or monuments alone. It depends on children — on whether the next generation grows up knowing the language, the genealogies, the ceremonies, and the values that make them Rapa Nui. On the most isolated inhabited island on Earth, that transmission is fragile, and it is the daily work of community organizations like the Corporacion de Resguardo Cultural Kahu Kahu ‘o Hera.

By investing in youth programs, the Mana Rapa Nui Foundation invests in the one form of preservation that cannot be outsourced or imported: a generation of young Rapa Nui who carry their culture forward because they were taught to live it.

“The survival of Rapa Nui culture does not depend on archives or monuments alone. It depends on children.”

Mana Rapa Nui Foundation

Mana Rapa Nui Foundation · 501(c)(3) Nonprofit · EIN: 33-4549354 · manarapanuifoundation.org · eteaveh@manarapanuifoundation.org