Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS has awarded an emergency $50,000 grant to the Maui Food Bank in Hawaii. The funds will help provide immediate relief to those suffering due to the severe wildfires in the coastal town of Lahaina on the island of Maui.
To date, more than 100 people have died and more remain unaccounted for. Many survivors have lost their homes, and their livelihoods, as wildfires burned 2,170 acres of land in Maui.
The Broadway Cares grant will help the food bank provide meals, fresh water and personal hygiene products to unhoused Maui residents. The Maui Food Bank is the island’s primary source for hunger relief and has been a part of Broadway Cares’ national grants program since 2019.
“To those in Lahaina and on the island of Maui, all of us in the theater community — onstage, backstage and in the audience — want you to know you are not alone,” Tom Viola, executive director of Broadway Cares, said in a statement. “While a single grant cannot replace all that’s been tragically lost in this historic fire, we know that we can make a difference on the ground, in the Lahaina and Maui communities by offering solace, meals and assistance to those left so bereft by this catastrophe.”
Since 1988, Broadway Cares has raised more than $300 million for essential services for people with HIV/AIDS and other illnesses. The organization’s national grant program supports more than 450 AIDS- and family-service organizations across the U.S. and Puerto Rico.
