More about the North Kohala Tool Library

Our Mission:

NKTL’s mission is to build community capacity by providing its members with affordable and convenient access to tools and equipment as well as opportunities to learn new skills. 

Our vision:

NKTL envisions a thriving, resilient and sustainable North Kohala, where residents receive support to make and fix what they need for their homes, cars, and gardens. A successful and thriving tool library will empower individuals, connect community members to one another, help members save money, reduce negative environmental impacts, and serve as an educational hub for residents to teach and learn valuable skills. It will also create a space for community members to donate quality, underused tools for broader community use.

Our Values: 

NKTL strives to be welcoming, inclusive, empowering, eco-friendly, educational, and sustainable. We care about improving local resilience, community connection and contributing to economic, environmental, and food security.

Tool Library Background

With its can-do spirit, community oriented nature, resourcefulness and diverse population, Kohala is the perfect community for a tool library. We are excited to get it established and add yet another useful resource to our amazing community.

Tools are expensive, oftentimes specialized, and necessary to complete almost any repair, maintenance, renovation, gardening, landscaping, farming projects and many other activities. Not having affordable access to tools can bar individuals from being able to take on projects. Renting tools is expensive, buying cheap tools (which are not always inexpensive) increases consumption and eventually results in junk tools filling up landfills; borrowing tools from family and friends doesn’t always work out. Tools that are purchased for individual projects often end up in storage eventually corroding beyond repair.

Tool libraries have beneficial community impacts including: increasing community resilience, improving the community, saving community members money and storage space, providing a venue for education and community building.

Tool libraries also have beneficial environmental impacts by reducing consumption and therefore production, reducing trips out of town (emissions, time and safety), reducing landfill use, increasing the amount that individual tools get used over their life span, enabling people to take on repair, maintenance, construction, gardening, farming projects and growing food locally.