Scholarship recipients Julianna, Tayler, and Brittany (L-R)
This is what it is all about, and what all of you bee hive adopters have helped to create. We presented three $1,000 scholarships to these girls this past weekend in Panaewa, Hilo. Thank you all very much for your generosity and kindness. You should have heard these three girls speeches. They appreciate all of you and also thank you all very much. I also want to thank you also for supporting the fight on the plight of the bees.
On Saturday, I told the crowd that I have a new vision and dream. We have an opportunity in front of us to create a model, not only locally but possibly even nationally and internationally, that ties adopting a bee hive with a college like UH Hilo to provide an education similar to Dr. Lorna Tsutsumi's program that also provides educational scholarships to students. We are already doing it. We just have to make it better, and we need to keep the momentum going. In our first year, we have raised over $50,000 dollars and over eighty donors participate in the program. Wow! Thanks to all of you. It would be great if we could surpass this benchmark in the upcoming 2012 - 2013 school year.
Thank you to Don Straney, Chancellor of UH Hilo, and all of the help from the college. Thank you to Dr. Lorna Tsutsumi, and all of your students and helpers. Thank you to Diki Short for taking care of the place. Thank you to Margaret Shiba from UH Foundation. Thank you to Leigh Ito from AWR and the rest of the team at AWR. You all made it happen.
~AW