Kalākaua championed future Hawaiian leaders attaining a broader education with his 1880 Hawaiian Youths Abroad program. His niece Kaʻiulani was not the first Hawaiian royal to study abroad. The Hawaiian government sent her cousins David Kawānanakoa (known as Koa), Edward Abnel Keliʻiahonui and Jonah Kūhiō Kalanianaʻole to attend Saint Matthew's School in the United States in 1885. Keliʻiahonui died young in 1887 while Kawānanakoa and Kūhiō traveled to England in 1890 to finish their education a few months after Kaʻiulani's own departure for an education abroad.