Kerstyn Afuso

Kerstyn Afuso is the Food Programs Coordinator at Roots Kōkua Kalihi Valley. She is a Registered Dietitian who has reshaped her nutrition expertise using a food systems lens. Her previous work with Hawaiian agricultural systems, produce prescription programs, and assisting with City & County of Honolulu food systems initiatives has deepened her dietetics practice. Now, at Roots, she is able to fulfill her passion of working at the intersection of nutrition, food systems, and health by leading programs that reconnect an ethnically diverse Kalihi community to their cultural foods and dishes, plant medicines and food traditions, and the land. By reminding kupuna (elders) of the staple foods that nourished them growing up and teaching these to a new generation of keiki (children), her work aims to heal Hawaii’s food system. 

The Returning to Our Roots Program is an organization that uses healthy, local, culturally-relevant foods to connect and heal those in the Kalihi ahupuaa (land division). Roots is housed within the Federally Qualified Health Center of Kōkua Kalihi Valley Comprehensive Family Services, a position that underscores the connection between food and health. Their model of “grow, prepare, share” refers not only to the fresh fruits and vegetables that they aggregate from farmers, but also to the culturally-grounded stories and traditions around food. Roots opens as a healthy cafe and farmers market twice a week; on the other days, they are growing, preparing, and sharing through youth nutrition classes, community gardening, mobile farmers’ markets, cultural cooking workshops, and food as medicine programs.