The church survived, but the school didn't.
VPP made sure the children came back anyway.

On August 8, 2023, the deadliest American wildfire in over a century swept through Lahaina, Maui — killing at least 100 people, destroying more than 2,200 structures, and erasing a community that had existed for generations. Sacred Hearts Catholic Church, which had stood in Lahaina for over a century, survived. The school next door did not. VPP was one of the first organizations to bring aid — arriving by both sea and air within days — and stayed long enough to ensure that Sacred Hearts School's children had a classroom, a teacher, and a subsidized tuition when the new school year began.

08/08/23

Date of the Lahaina wildfire

100+

Lives lost in the deadliest U.S. wildfire in over a century

2,200+

Structures destroyed in Lahaina

1

School rebuilt through tents, furnishings, and VPP's support

Lahaina was not just a town. It was a community built over generations.

Lahaina, on the western coast of Maui, is one of Hawaii's oldest and most historically significant communities. For centuries it served as the capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom, a center of the whaling industry, and a cultural crossroads where Native Hawaiian, Asian, and Western communities built a shared civic life. By 2023 it was home to approximately 13,000 people — a working-class community of Native Hawaiians, Filipino families, and long-term residents who had deep roots in the land and in the institutions they had built together.

Sacred Hearts Parish

Sacred Hearts Catholic Church has been a cornerstone of Lahaina's community for generations — serving Native Hawaiian, Filipino, and multiethnic Catholic families who have worshipped, married, baptized their children, and buried their dead within its walls. The parish school — Sacred Hearts School — has educated Lahaina's children for decades, providing a Catholic education to a community where the Church has been one of the most consistent institutional presences in the town's history.

A community under pressure

Even before the fire, Lahaina faced the pressures common to many Hawaiian communities — rising costs of living, generational displacement, and the tension between a working-class local population and the tourism economy that surrounds them. The people who lost everything on August 8 were not, for the most part, people with resources to fall back on. They were people whose entire lives — homes, jobs, schools, community — existed within a few square miles of the town that burned.

Lahaina was not an abstraction. It was a place where families had lived for generations, where children went to the same schools their parents had attended, where the church was the center of a community that knew everyone's name.
Jason Jones

The deadliest American wildfire in over a century — and the world watched it burn.

On the morning of August 8, 2023, driven by Hurricane Dora's winds and a prolonged drought that had left the landscape tinder-dry, a fire ignited near Lahaina and moved with catastrophic speed through the town. Within hours, Lahaina's historic Front Street — lined with buildings that had stood for over a century — was gone. The fire killed at least 100 people, making it the deadliest American wildfire since the 1918 Cloquet fire in Minnesota. More than 2,200 structures were destroyed, and thousands of residents lost everything.

Sacred Hearts in the fire

Sacred Hearts Catholic Church survived — its walls standing amid the destruction around it, a physical testament to something that endured when almost everything else was lost. But the school building next door was destroyed. For the families of Sacred Hearts School — already dealing with the loss of their homes, their neighbors, and in some cases their loved ones — the destruction of the school meant their children faced the new school year with nowhere to go.

The immediate response

Within days of the fire, VPP arrived in Lahaina — one of the first relief organizations on the ground, coming in by both sea and air through its partner EPIC Ministry. While media attention was still high and the scale of the disaster was still being assessed, VPP was already on the ground asking not what the cameras needed but what the community needed.

The church survived. That matters — not just as a building but as a symbol. Something endured. VPP's job was to make sure the school endured too.
Jason Jones

Tents, furnishings, and subsidized tuition. The children came back to school.

VPP's response in Lahaina was focused and practical — not on what would generate the most attention, but on what the community actually needed. Sacred Hearts School's building was gone. The children of Lahaina's Catholic families needed somewhere to learn. VPP set up makeshift tent classrooms adjacent to the surviving church, furnished them so that students had a functional learning environment, and subsidized tuition in the initial months so that families who had lost everything were not also asked to find school fees.

Programs

Tent classrooms: Working with EPIC Ministry and the Knights of Columbus, VPP established temporary tent classrooms so that Sacred Hearts School could reopen and children could return to education. The tents were not a makeshift afterthought — they were set up, furnished, and made into functional learning spaces where teaching and learning could actually happen.

Tuition subsidies: For families who had lost their homes and their livelihoods in the fire, school tuition was an impossibility. VPP subsidized tuition in the initial months of the recovery period — ensuring that no Sacred Hearts family had to choose between keeping their children in school and meeting their most basic survival needs.

Community presence: VPP's partners — EPIC Ministry and the Knights of Columbus — maintained a sustained presence in Lahaina through the recovery period. Principal Tonata Lolesio of Sacred Hearts School was a key partner on the ground, ensuring that the school community's specific needs were understood and met.

VPP goes where the need is.

The Lahaina program is not ongoing in the same way as VPP's programs in Afghanistan, Sudan, or Nigeria — the acute relief phase has concluded, and Sacred Hearts School and its community are in a longer-term rebuilding process that will take years. But the Lahaina response represents something important about who VPP is and how it operates.

VPP did not wait for the situation to be assessed, the logistics to be organized, or the media narrative to solidify before showing up. It arrived within days — by sea and by air — because that is what it means to defend the vulnerable from violence. Wildfires are violence. Disasters are violence. The destruction of a community built over generations is violence. VPP responds to all of it.

What this program demonstrated

Lahaina demonstrated that VPP's model — rapid response, local partnerships, focused practical aid, sustained presence — works not just in conflict zones overseas but in American communities facing catastrophic loss. EPIC Ministry and the Knights of Columbus proved to be exactly the kind of trusted local partners that VPP relies on in every region it serves.

The Sacred Hearts community today

Sacred Hearts Catholic Church and Sacred Hearts School are in the long process of rebuilding — physically, financially, and communally. The reconstruction of Lahaina will take years. VPP remains connected to the Sacred Hearts community and stands ready to respond if acute need arises again.

We go where the need is. It doesn't matter whether that's Khartoum or Kabul or Lahaina. If there are vulnerable people and we can help, we show up. That's what VPP does.
Jason Jones

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Hawaii

The church survived, but the school didn't. VPP made sure the children came back anyway.

08/08/23

100+

2,200+

1

Lahaina was not just a town. It was a community built over generations.

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The church survived, but the school didn't.
VPP made sure the children came back anyway.