Who we are
The Arc of Hilo was founded in 1954 by a small group of Big Island families who wanted their children with disabilities to have the same shot at adulthood as anyone else — work, independence, community. Seventy years later, that's still the only mission.
Today The Arc of Hilo runs housing, day programs, advocacy work, and family support across East Hawaiʻi. DocuShred is one of our newest programs — and our first stand-alone, commercially-competitive business. We launched it because we knew what our community needed most wasn't another program. It was a real job.
Why shredding?
We looked at a dozen industries. Shredding stood out because it's structured (the same steps every time), teachable (our trainees master it in weeks, not years), and in demand (every medical office, law firm, and small business on this island has paper it can't afford to keep).
And it's dignified work. Serious work. Our trainees take pride in weighing bins, running the shredders, and operating industrial equipment — and they should. It's skilled labor. We don't treat it like anything else.
What happens next
We're small now — five customers, day one, a humble operation. But every month we add more businesses, more shifts, more trainees, more pounds processed. Our plan is to grow steadily, stay local, and never lose the thing that makes us different: the hands that handle your paper.