Awards
Advertiser Staff
Three years ago, Maui high school student Lauren Quill decided she wanted to tutor homeless children.
She got in touch with a homeless shelter, only to learn that there was no such program there. Undaunted, she decided to start one, with the shelter's permission.
"I knew what I wanted to do," she said. "I was very excited to be starting something that would be able to benefit a group of people in a very positive way."
Before long she and four classmates were tutoring 12 homeless children once a week. She applied for and received a $1,000 grant to purchase supplies and learning games for the program.
Today, "Kids Helping Kids" is sponsored by her school's Rotary Interact Club. A large number of students alternate in tutoring 24 homeless children.
"This program lets the children share with people who give them the attention they need and deserve," she said.
In recognition of her outstanding community service, Quill, a senior at Seabury Hall in Makawao, Maui, has been named a recipient in The Prudential Spirit of Community Awards.
Carrie Yap, 12, of Wailuku, Maui, has also received a Prudential award. A seventh-grader at '?ao Intermediate School, Yap volunteers regularly at the Maui Ocean Center as part of an effort to revitalize coral life.
Yap's volunteer responsibilities include speaking to visitors and answering questions about coral and other marine species. She also helps prepare food for the marine animals and cleans the aquarium tanks that house them.
Distinguished finalists for the awards were:
- Michelle Mitchell, 17, of Kihe'i, Maui, a senior at Maui High School who founded and presides over a 4-H Dog Club and helps young dog owners to train, groom and handle the other responsibilities of dog ownership.
- Emma Yuen, 17, of Ninole, Hawai'i, a senior at Hilo High School who created and presides over an environmental club at her school that has helped protect endangered species and assisted in eradicating weeds, recycling paper and aluminum, and cleaning up beaches.
- Rene Firing, an eighth-grader at Sacred Hearts Academy, has won third place in the nation and a $5,500 savings bond in the Veterans of Foreign Wars National Youth Essay Contest. Earlier, she won the state's youth contest.
Winners of this year's Hawaii MathCounts State Competition are Iolani's Nolan Chung, Bryce Lee, Kevin Sin and Mai Tsukikawa, who scored highest in team competition and won the perpetual team trophy.
Chung, Lee and Sin, along with Eugene So of Punahou, qualified as the Hawaii MathCounts team and will represent Hawai'i at the national competition in Chicago this summer.
Placing second were students from Punahou School; third, Waiakea Intermediate School; fourth, Kaimuki Middle School; fifth, Highlands Intermediate School; and sixth, Kalama Intermediate School.
Top 10 in the Sprint and Target Rounds were Nolan Chung, Eugene So, Bryce Lee, Kevin Sin, Collin Takasaki, Mai Tsukikawa, Kimberly Heu, Tyler Dos Santos-Tam, Roydan Ongie and Drew Robb.
MathCounts is a demanding event for sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders intended to promote interest in mathematics by making it challenging, exciting and prestigious.
Initiated in 1983, MathCounts now involves more than 35,000 students a year nationally.
