Global Aloha began with a simple question: What does the shaka really mean?

For filmmaker and storyteller Steve Sue, that question became a journey to better understand the Hawaiʻi he calls home.

What began as a documentary about the origins and meanings of the shaka grew into a five-year exploration of Hawaiʻi’s people, history and values. Steve interviewed hundreds of people and did deep research to discover that the shaka was much more than a hand gesture. It was an expression of something deeper: aloha in action.

That journey became the award-winning documentary SHAKA, A Story of Aloha and inspired Project Shaka, a grassroots effort to preserve and share the gesture and the values behind it.

Project Shaka quickly moved beyond the screen and became a movement.

The effort helped inspire the Hawaiʻi Shaka License Plate putting thousands of shakas on Hawaiʻi roads, supported educational and community programs, and helped lead to legislation officially recognizing the Shaka as the Official Hawaiʻi State Gesture.

But the more the movement grew, the clearer something became:

While the shaka was the symbol. Aloha was the bigger story.

Steve’s filmmaking continued to explore that idea.

THE 100TH, Seeds of Aloha follows the WWII 100th Infantry Battalion and 442nd Regimental Combat Team, exploring how men raised with Hawaiʻi values carried those values through war, sacrifice and service—and planted seeds that continue to grow generations later.

ʻONO, Foods of Aloha explores another expression of aloha: the foods, people and cultures that gather around the table and make Hawaiʻi one of the world’s great melting pots of cooperation, collaboration, inclusion and love.

Together, the films are an exploration of a larger question: What can Hawaiʻi teach the world about how we treat one another?

Enter Global Aloha

While Project Shaka had demonstrated that a familiar symbol could open the door to conversations about kindness, connection, service, respect and caring for community, the global question through the distribution of films led to the next chapter of disseminating values that didn’t belong only to Hawaiʻi, but rather were universal human values.

So the vision expanded into Global Aloha—a movement born in Hawaiʻi but created for everyone.

Today, Project Shaka continues as Global Aloha’s Hawaiʻi program and the place where much of the movement was first tested and brought to life.

Global Aloha carries that work outward through films, education, experiences, community programs and Acts of Aloha that give people simple ways to put aloha into practice.

Steve’s journey began by asking what one little hand gesture meant.

It led to a much bigger idea:

You don’t have to live in Hawaiʻi to live with aloha.

And perhaps the greatest way to honor aloha is not simply to understand it. It’s to put aloha into action.

To Global Aloha, aloha is more than a greeting. It is a way of living.

It means choosing connection over division, caring for others, acting with kindness and respect, serving our communities, and taking responsibility for the world we share.

Our films explore aloha through very different stories. SHAKA, A Story of Aloha discovers how a simple hand gesture became an expression of friendship, humility, connection and the Aloha Spirit. THE 100TH, Seeds of Aloha reveals aloha under extraordinary circumstances—how Hawaiʻi’s 100th/442nd soldiers carried values of courage, sacrifice, loyalty and service through war and planted seeds that continue to flourish generations later.

Together, these stories remind us that aloha isn’t something we say. It’s something we do.

That’s the idea behind Global Aloha: taking values rooted in Hawaiʻi and putting them into action anywhere in the world.

ID8 is the Hawaiʻi-based nonprofit behind Global Aloha, dedicated to empowering the world to flourish.

Our name represents ideas that create lasting impact, with the “8” symbolizing an infinity loop of  positive legacy—ideas that continue to grow, spread and empower others long after we’re gone.

Through storytelling, education, innovation and community action, ID8 turns good ideas into sustainable realities. Global Aloha is one of those ideas: born in Hawaiʻi and designed to inspire people everywhere to put aloha into action. Learn more at ID8.ORG »

ID8. FLOURISH.

LOCAL WISDOM. GLOBAL POSSIBILITY.
We believe flourishing looks different in different places. Our goal is not to export Hawaiʻi’s culture or ask other communities to adopt its traditions. Instead, we encourage people to discover, preserve and activate the values already rooted in their own cultures, communities and languages.

Hawaiʻi provides inspiration. Aloha Spirit provides an example. Around the world, other cultures have their own expressions of connection, compassion, reciprocity, service and care.

We believe those ideas can help people flourish wherever they are—when expressed authentically in ways that belong to them.