A Steadying Light
Aloka means light. The Aloka Foundation walks side-by-side with those seeking more authentic and full lives, their families, and their caregivers to provide the resources, education, and community that help people access the brilliance within and build the futures they imagine for themselves.
Our Vision
The Aloka Foundation provides a steadying light, illuminating pathways for those seeking more authentic and full lives. Aloka partners with people, outfitting and guiding with resources, education, and co-facilitated community building projects. Our aim is to discover the brilliance within people, so that neighborhoods and communities may rise, connect, and transform the world around them.
Why Aloka
Our partners at Life Works have spent more than two decades helping people live real lives in homes of their own, through person-centered supported living services. That daily support is life-changing. It is also government funded, which means it only covers essential services.
There is no buffer for the wheelchair-accessible van that turns a house into a launching pad. No line item for the tuition that turns a spark of interest into a career. No fund for the home modification that turns dependence into independence.
That is where Aloka begins. The Aloka Foundation exists to fund what the service system cannot: the opportunities that elevate quality of life, deepen independence, and help people, and the caregivers who walk beside them, reach their highest future potential. We don’t duplicate services. We light the path beyond them.
Our Mission
So individuals, and the direct support professionals who serve them, can pursue learning, certification, and growth that expand opportunity and unlock future potential.
Funding essential accessibility modifications that increase independence, dignity, and quality of life for individuals and families.
Writing and supporting grants for co-facilitated projects that cultivate connection, shared leadership, and locally driven solutions.
Engaging in meaningful service that strengthens neighborhoods and fosters belonging, purpose, and collective care.
Offering programming that helps individuals, families, and communities access their inner light, exercise agency over their lives, and build cultures of compassion and resilience.
Partnering with people and their communities—financially, educationally, and relationally—so that together we illuminate pathways toward lives of distinction, purpose, and connection.
Every Gift Lights a Path
Whether you can give $25 or sustain a monthly partnership, every contribution goes directly toward real, specific needs: a ramp, a semester, a set of adaptive tools, a neighborhood project. No gift is symbolic here. Every gift is a pathway.
Kindling. Covers application fees, course materials, or supplies for a community project. Small gifts, given together, start real change.
Lantern. Helps fund adaptive equipment, a professional certification exam, or a month of continuing education for a caregiver.
Beacon. Makes a serious dent in a vehicle accommodation, home modification, or tuition: the big-ticket needs no service system will cover.
Monthly giving at any level makes you a Lightkeeper: a sustaining partner whose steady support lets us say “yes” faster when a need arrives.
See the Work
These short films from our partners at Life Works show what person-centered support looks like, and why the opportunities Aloka funds matter so much.
Our People
The Aloka Foundation was co-founded by Kirk Hinkleman, Executive Director at Life Works, and Beth Gallagher, Founder & CEO of Life Works. It grew out of the Life Works community, a team that has spent more than twenty years helping people build self-determined, sustainable lives instead of settling for prefabricated support systems.
“When we quiet the mind and steady the heart, we find clarity and insights into our authentic nature. Which pairs well with the notion of our Highest Future Potential we seek when engaged in meaningful person centered practices.” —Kirk Hinkleman
Join Us
A future of independence is built one opportunity at a time. Help us fund the next one.