Welcome Benoit!

One of our dreams at KKV is to create leadership and career pathways for Kalihi youth who often thrive in non-traditional education and mentorship programs. This month, we are happy to announce that KVIBE has hired long-time participant Benathan (Benoit) Setik as Program Assistant.  

Benoit continued, “I kept on coming because they were building me.” As a KVIBE intern, Benoit completed the bike mechanics program, learning how to build and repair bikes. He also participated in several of KVIBE’s Community Education-Civic Engagement programs, including the Nakem Leadership Institute and the Waiwai Health Fellowship. This past summer, he even organized a community mapping activity for Waiwai where participants compared and critically analyzed the socioeconomic differences of Kalihi and Kaka’ako districts.  

When asked about how KVIBE supported his leadership development Benoit shared, “KVIBE helped me and encouraged me every day to keep going to school. There were so many moments when I wanted to drop all my classes. But, KVIBE taught me so much about myself and society that it made me want to continue learning. Now, I don’t want to stop learning.” Benoit is now a student at Honolulu Community College pursuing his degree in liberal arts.  

Benoit proudly claims KVIBE as home. When asked why, this is what he said, “It’s different...We explore our trauma, our conflicts, and we work through those things together through mutual respect, understanding, and critical thinking. We’re learning together how to be the best version of ourselves. This is a place where, aside from my house, I can cry at.” Mental health is a big part of KVIBE’s program curriculum. KVIBE was honored in 2019 and 2020 by the Movember Foundation as a model for uplifting teen boys and providing them with community leadership opportunities.  

Benoit has ancestral ties to the lands of Chuuk and Pohnpei in the Federated States of Micronesia. A recent graduate of Farrington High School and KKV scholarship recipient, Benoit will be working as a community liaison for KVIBE families and as an outreach worker to recruit youth participants to the program.  

Benoit joined the KVIBE program as an intern back in 2017 when he first moved to Hawaii to attend high school. Living with his aunt, Innocenta Sound-Kikku who KKV’s Pacific Voices program coordinator and leader in the Micronesian community, Benoit was introduced to KKV and its youth programs through KVIBE’s first ever Community Dinner Night Event and it reminded him of traditional gatherings back home where the community feasts and feeds so many people. He remembers,

“KVIBE’s Community Dinner Night is the only place that I’d seen that reminded me of home. It feeds so many people, so I fell in love with the space and I kept on coming.” 

Benoit says, “KVIBE is the place where people can listen and can learn from the younger ones. We learn from each other. We don’t disregard people’s knowledge even if they’re young. [The youth] experience so much that sometimes we can’t even know what it would be like to go through that.” In his new role as Program Assistant, Benoit dreams of helping youth fulfill their dreams just like his KVIBE mentors helped him realize his.