A Gathering to Restore, Repair, & Reimagine
This Fall, the Opportunity Youth Forum (OYF) national network, and the Belonging, Meaning, Wellbeing, and Purpose (BMWP) Funder Community of Practice will gather in Hawaiʻi for an immersive, place-based learning experience rooted in ʻāina, culture, community, and the wisdom of generations.
After hosting a deeply transformative gathering at the Legacy Sites in Montgomery earlier this spring, our national network will convene in O’ahu from October 26–29, 2026, in partnership with the Partners in Development Foundation and the Opportunity for Youth Action Hawaiʻi consortium. Hawaiʻi offers more than a beautiful setting for this gathering. It offers a living classroom where land, ocean, language, history, healing, and justice are deeply connected.
Our Fall convening continues on the learning arc that began in Montgomery, where many of us bore witness to the enduring legacies of slavery, colonization, Jim Crow, racial injustice, and mass incarceration. As we come together in Hawaiʻi, we carry that truth-telling forward into a shared exploration of restoration, repair, and reimagination. Here, we will reflect on the ongoing impacts of colonization and extraction while learning from Native Hawaiian practices that center relationship, responsibility, belonging, healing, and collective care.
*Please note this convening is an invitation-only national network gathering. For questions & Queries please email the AIFCS team here: [email protected]
Exploring Culture, Language, Justice & Intergenerational Healing
Our gathering in Hawaiʻi will be hosted in community with OYF’s Hawai’i network partner, Partners in Development Foundation, and the Opportunity for Youth Action Hawaiʻi consortium, a key leader in advancing youth justice reform in ways that center Native Hawaiian culture, healing, and community-led solutions. The learning arc will explore local efforts towards transformative systems change that goes beyond new policies or programs, and hones in on restoring relationships, listening to youth and families, honoring intergenrational place-based wisdom, and building pathways where young people can experience belonging, meaning, wellbeing, and purpose.
We will convene a judicial panel featuring Judge Ophir Cassidy (New Zealand), Judge Jessi Hall (Hawaiʻi), and Judge Dyan Medeiros (Hawaiʻi) focused on transforming youth justice systems through healing-centered practices and Indigenous wisdom. Sitting judges and young people will engage in dialogue about the legal system’s impact on youth, what healing-centered alternatives look like in practice, and what justice can become when it is guided by community-centered wisdom.
Across the Opportunity Youth Forum network, we work alongside young people, practitioners, community leaders, funders, and systems leaders to transform the structures that shape opportunity in this country. Yet meaningful systems change requires more than policy reform or programmatic innovation alone. It requires pilina — transformative relationships and creating the conditions for belonging, meaning, wellbeing, and purpose.
What Participants Will Experience
Throughout the convening, participants will engage in learning experiences rooted in ʻāina (land), culture, and community. Site-based experiences may include visits to farms, fishponds, youth and family centers, voyaging experiences, and conversations with local leaders who are advancing community-centered solutions across Hawaiʻi. These experiences are designed to move learning beyond conference rooms and into spaces where knowledge is lived, practiced, and shared.
ʻĀina-Based Learning
Āina reflects the relationship of mutual responsibility between people, place, culture, history, and environment. Participants will experience immersive site visits that will intentionally connect them to land, food, and Indigenous stewardship.
Justice Reimagined
A confirmed cross-sector judicial panel with Judges Cassidy, Hall & Medeiros moderated by youth. A rare cross-sector centerpiece dialogue connecting the legal system’s impact on young people to healing-centered, culturally-rooted solutions.
Peer Learning
300+ OYF network practitioners, community partners, and young adult advocates learning alongside 80+ philanthropic leaders in the BMWP Funder CoP in one of the most powerful field-building spaces in the country.
Bringing together national network partners from across OYF’s 40+ communities and philanthropic leaders from the BMWP Funder Community of Practice, this gathering will serve as a space for reflection, relationship-building, shared learning, and collective imagination. Together, we will deepen our understanding of what becomes possible when systems change is rooted in healing, culture, community wisdom, and belonging.
We look forward to gathering in community with the OYF national network this October as we continue building toward a future where all young people can thrive with belonging, meaning, wellbeing, and purpose—and where communities have the power to shape their own vibrant and lasting solutions for generations to come.
OYF Legacy Sites Gathering 2026, Participants Group Photo with Mr. Bryan Stevenson Montgomery, Alabama