 Good morning, and welcome to another episode of Rotary in Hawaii, People of Action. My name is Janet Sheffer, I'm the public image chair for Rotary District 5,000 here in Hawaii, and I am very pleased to introduce our very special guest today, Ms. Christine Westmoreland. Welcome, Christine. Thank you. Christine is joining us today from the Hawaii Rotary Youth Foundation, which we're going to talk a lot about. They provide scholarships to high school students here in Hawaii, so you're going to find out how you can help your high school student in your life get a scholarship from Rotary. So lots of important details, please stay tuned for the next half hour, you're going to learn a lot. Christine Westmoreland, again, is the president of the Hawaii Rotary Youth Foundation, and the topic is scholarships for Hawaii high school students. Good morning. How are you today? Good morning. I'm fine. Happy to be here. Wonderful. Thank you again for joining us here on Think Tech. The Hawaii Rotary Youth Foundation has been around for a while, and so first I guess we're going to start out with the history, which is very interesting, and find out how people can get involved. So talk to us about the history and what it is. We were founded by Sully Sullivan, who also founded Foodland here in Hawaii. He was a Rotarian here in Hawaii, was president of his club, and went on to become district governor. During his year of district governor, this was 1976, 77, he founded Hawaii Rotary Youth Foundation. I think he wanted to do something for Rotary as well as the children of Hawaii, and he certainly did that. Fantastic. Tell us a little bit about the details of what his vision was, and how you continue it today. Okay. Well, he wanted to provide a way for children here in Hawaii, high school graduates, to go on to a four-year university of their choice. He did that by creating the scholarship fund. He not only contributed his own money, but he did a lot of fundraising. He had golf tournaments, concerts. So he built up the endowment, and we're still here, 42 years later. So it started in 1976, 77, 42 years later, great. So I know that you have goals each year, and you're still touching, well, you've touched thousands of lives over the years since Sully Sullivan started this. Tell us about what your goals are for this year. We have set a goal of $40 per Rotarian as a contribution to HRYF. We aren't there yet. Last year, we ended about $36 per Rotarian. Now that's a lot of Rotarians that give a great deal more, and Rotarians that don't give anything. So we'd really like to achieve that $40 per Rotarian this year. Okay. Great. If you have any questions out there, make sure to contact Christine about that. Christine has been on board with the Hawaii Rotary Youth Foundation for several years. Tell us why your passion led you to the Hawaii Rotary Youth Foundation as a Rotarian, and a little bit about yourself. Okay. Well, I've been a Rotarian almost since they let women in a long time. I think that was in the 80s? Yes. I came on in 88. They let women on in 87. Oh, you didn't waste much time. But when I moved to Hawaii, I ended up in the same club as Sully Sullivan, the Alamoana Club. So I knew Sully not well, but he came occasionally to our meetings at that point. And he was so, I've never seen anybody so happy to be able to use his money to support worthy causes. He just loved being able to help. And so he was an inspiration, but there was another member of my club, Stanley Togigawa. Stanley is unstoppable. He wants to do everything he can before his time is up to help all around the world. And he has won the Rotary's highest award, the Service Above Self Award. So those two gentlemen inspired me to become part of Hawaii Rotary Youth Foundation. And what type of professional background brought you to the, gave you the experience to be able to run such an important organization for Hawaii students? Well, my first career was in television. Really? Yes. So this is not too formal, too foreign for you. You worked at KITV? Yes. Years ago. And my second career was in credit unions, which may seem like a totally different thing, but then I was in a management position, so that helps in doing this job. Not so different. You have to raise money and be familiar with the financial side of things to be able to provide these high school students their scholarships. So lots of experience. And of course, the TV didn't hurt. Okay, so since the Hawaii Rotary Youth Foundation helps Hawaii high school students, talk to us a little bit about how a high school student out there looking to fund their four-year career can get involved today and take advantage of a scholarship to start college, maybe a senior that's ready to start college in the fall of this year specifically, or how their parent, or grandparent, tutus, and aunties can guide them to receive these scholarships. And a little bit more about the specific scholarships. Okay. Well, high school students, graduating high school students this year, can apply. They can apply to only one Rotary Club. They can get that application from their high school counselor from a Rotary Club or from our website. Our website is hawaiirotaryyouthfoundation.org, all spelled out, and the application is there. They can download it or there is a fillable form. It includes two letters of recommendations, high school transcript, the SAT or ACT scores, a copy of their SAR, or the FASA, which is a financial form, and then a personal statement of eight to nine hundred words. They have to gather all that up and get it to a Rotary Club by next week, Wednesday, February 6th. Yeah. Right. Okay. So high school students are very familiar and a lot of kids that are in need financially have been going through this process. A lot of the information that you just cited, they already have. They have the letters of recommendation. They have or know someone that's in a Rotary Club, so they can select that Rotary Club. There are 53 Rotary Clubs on this island, Oahu, but I mean in the state of Hawaii. And so there are clubs on every single island, including Lanai. That's right. And we have had applicants from Lanai. Right. And so you've got every island that has a club that you need to contact the person. And I think that if you go to the Rotary District website, that will list the different clubs, but actually Christine's website, HawaiiRotaryYouthFoundation.org, list all the clubs and the representatives and their phone numbers and email addresses. Yeah. Yeah. And even physical address. Right. And so I'm going to repeat that website again. Okay. HawaiiRotaryYouthFoundation.org. Correct. And if you'd prefer, go to the Facebook page or the Instagram page, and that will link you right to the website to be able to get that application in in the next week. Wednesday the 6th is the final deadline. That is. Okay. Very good. How many applicants typically a year make advantage of this opportunity across the state of Hawaii? I'm sorry. I don't have that number. Okay. And within the Rotary Club, it varies quite a bit. We like them to have at least three. Some get over 20. It just depends on how tight they are with the high schools in their area. Because those high school counselors kind of are the ones that work at getting the students to apply. But we also let the Rotary Clubs work together. So if one club isn't getting very many apps and another club is getting an awful lot, they can swap them. Fantastic. Yeah. So counselors watch Think Tech. They use this platform in high school classrooms. So counselors out there, send your students or go yourself to Hawaii Rotary Youth Foundation and get that resource to your students. So now we're going to get into the type of help. As we learned, Soli Sullivan with Foodlands started this back in 1976-77 as a Rotary Project. It has grown for over 43 years this year and is providing massive scholarships as far as the total amount for these 53 clubs. So talk to us about what a scholarship value is and how many applicants, how many recipients you award scholarships each year. Okay. The scholarship amounts are $5,000 except for two. We have two $10,000 awards. A one recognizes Soli Sullivan and that's for a student going to a mainland college. The second one represents Joanna Sullivan. She did attend UH. So that is for a student staying here in state to go to school. We also have money from the Weinberg Foundation. They gave us a $1 million endowment. We have the interest to award scholarships each year. So right now that's running about three scholarships. Those three scholarships require need has to be demonstrated. The other scholarships do not, but I can tell you that the majority of our scholarships do go to someone with need. With need. Okay. And that's a majority of high school students here in Hawaii that need scholarship and financial aid. So we're going to talk more about that and we're really going to talk about the special aspect of the Weinberg Foundation, which is celebrating something special this year with the Hawaii Rotary Youth Foundation and we will be right back. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. Sounds like scuba divers are the poor man's astronaut. At DiveHeart we believe that to be true. We say forget the moon. DiveHeart can help children, adults and veterans of all abilities escape gravity right here on earth. Hey Aloha and welcome to the Think Tech Hawaii studios. I'm Andrew Lang, the host of Security Matters Hawaii. I'm airing here every Tuesday at 10 a.m. Hawaii time and I'm trying to bring this community information, security information specifically that will help you live a safer life, help keep our community safer and help keep our businesses safer. So join me because Security Matters, Aloha. Welcome back to Hawaii Rotary People of Action and we have one of the greatest peoples of action, persons of action in Hawaii Rotary today and that is Christine Westmoreland, president of the Hawaii Rotary Youth Foundation. Welcome back to the show. Thank you. We're going to get into a few more details. Thank you again for joining us today. The show has been focusing on how high school students across the state of Hawaii can get a scholarship, apply for a scholarship. The deadline is coming up. It is next Wednesday, February 6th to apply. It is not hard to apply. High school students that have their scholarship and financial aid packages together simply go to the Hawaii Rotary Youth Foundation.org website. You can fill out the application right online and submit it right there. And Christine is going to talk a little bit more today about how our viewers out there can get involved, how the community can get involved and you can get involved to support Hawaii high school students with these scholarships. What can people at home do to provide support to Hawaii's high school students? Okay. Well, we love your money. I don't know if you want to hear that or not, but this year we will award over a quarter of a million dollars in scholarships. Now we have a very healthy endowment. It has a little over five million dollars in it, but we're pulling out a quarter of a million dollars every year. So you can see that we need to keep it up. And we have a formula that we use. It's five percent of the endowment amount over twenty quarters. And so they tell us you can take out this much and not, you know, hurt the fund. So this year we can take out two hundred and thirty six thousand dollars. We need to come up with two hundred and sixty thousand dollars. So we need a little help from the Rotarians or people in the community. We love your money and we put it to good use. Now the best time to give is during the Give Aloha campaign that Foodland puts on every September. And the reason it's the best time to give, one, it's easy. You know, you're going to buy your groceries anyway. And when you get up to the checkout stand, you just say, I want to make a donation to Hawaii Rotary Youth Foundation. Our number is 77199, but you don't even have to remember that because they have a little booklet and they can look it up and you can make your donation. When you do that, they give you a receipt. They'll give you two if you would like. So one is for your tax purposes and the other one can be sent to our office, particularly if you're a Rotarian. And then we will make sure the club gets the credit for that donation as well as. Now, the reason it's the best, that was why it was the easiest. The reason it's the best is because it gets matched. And it's a complicated formula, but it comes out to about 20%. So if you gave $40 to H-R-Y-F, we would receive $48 approximately because there's a match from Foodland and Western Union. So that is something we're very excited about. We do have another thing, it's newer, and that's Amazon Smile. So if you buy things with Amazon, you can sign up and the website is actually Amazon Smile Opposite, but it's called Smile, no, I'm sorry, the website is Smile.Amazon.com. And you have to sign up the first time and say that you want Hawaii Rotary Youth Foundation to benefit from your purchases, and then it's a small amount, it doesn't cost you any more money, and that goes to us. And it's not a lot, but if we get more people doing it, it could be substantial. And how long ago did you start the Amazon program? I think it's only a year or two old. So it will grow. Pretty recent. Because like you and me and everybody else out there, we're all shopping on Amazon. And I don't know about you, but when I shop on Amazon, I actually get a notification who would you like to support. So I always select Hawaii Rotary Youth Foundation. Foodland, of course, is give a lo-ha program, is fantastic, it's been around forever. It started out when we supported our schools, our schools that our kids went to. If your child is about to graduate, it's time to support the foundation that can help them with a scholarship to college. So again, Foodland, thank you very much. And Western Union, which I wasn't even aware of, not only is Foodland providing the venue to make the donations, regular, everyday people, not even Rotarians, but they're also matching, it sounds like a certain percentage along with Western Union, anything that you give to Foodland, so fantastic. We have a lot of recipients out there over the past 43 years. And of course, the reason you do this is because it makes a difference in kids' lives, in children's lives. Here in Hawaii, the kids, the high school students need support to be able to get to that four-year college, whether they're staying here in Hawaii or going to the mainland. So I know you have success stories about kids. I know you have stories about the needy kids and the well-deserving kids, children. Please talk to us about some of those stories. You tell me when you want me to stop. You got it. You go on all day. There you go. We'll do. All right. One of my very favorites, maybe I shouldn't have a favorite, but I do. Her name is Tashana Wright, young lady went to Waianae High School, was brought forth by the Rotary Club of Waianae Coast. This young lady had a disabled mother, father wasn't around, older sister was supporting the family. In her personal essay, Tashana wrote that she studied hard and she got good grades because it was one of the few things that made her mother smile. This young woman joined Junior Rotsy ROTC when she went to high school. By the time she graduated, I don't know what the term is, commander, but she was the top person in Junior Rotsy for the entire state of Hawaii. A young lady that had no advantages just blew me away, chicken skin. And I was able to introduce her at a district conference and that was a real pleasure. So she was one of my favorites. Another young man from Maui named Dorian Rabo McGowan was a $10,000 winner and he came from Kamehameha School on Maui. He was one of four children, father was incarcerated, mom was doing her best, a single mom trying to raise four kids. So he went to live with his grandparents and from his grandfather he learned to work hard and just keep going. From his grandmother he got love, unconditional love and she just believed he could do anything and he's pretty much proving that right. Almost a 4-0 is at Stanford University. This is his second year. I talked to him before Christmas and he was doing fine. His senior project was he reconfigured a lawnmower to run on ethanol and he used it to mow the lawns of his elderly neighbors. Wow. Yeah. Pretty cool. Fantastic. He sounds very smart. Yes. Very smart too. Yeah. Any other stories you want to share? Oh yes. Okay. Now this young lady, I don't remember her name. I interviewed her and years ago we asked for pictures. We don't do that anymore but this was years ago. And the young lady in her picture had really long hair, just beautiful hair. And when we interviewed her it was very short. Well in the course of the interview we found out she was a swimmer and after the interview was over I walked her downstairs out of the building and I said oh is your mom picking you up or did you drive? And she said no I took the bus. And I said oh okay well I'm glad you found us. And I said I noticed that in your picture you had very long hair and now it's just very short. I said was that because you're a swimmer? And she said no. I have a friend who had cancer and so me and another girlfriend cut off all our hair to support her. This is a teenage girl. Do they care about anything more than their looks? I just that blew me away and I will never forget it. What an inspiration. I hope that she was a big winner. And this is the scallops from where? She was here on a walk huh? On a walk. Yeah. Okay. Well I hope that you have such inspiring stories for the recipients and winners this year. I'm sure that you will. I will. Yes we will. So talk to us a bit about the process that the Rotary Clubs take across Hawaii again 53 clubs all donating to the scholarship fund every year and actually as a club being given the opportunity to participate in your program. How do they support it? How do they help the process? Find the recipients? What is the process? Okay. They have to pay $200 that is their membership with Hawaii Rotary Youth Foundation. They do that. They're able to award a scholarship. Their names are on the website with each club has a rep. So that rep's information is on the website. They gather the applications. They interview the students. It should be at least three club members that do that. And then they have to choose which is really, really hard. But many of the clubs have their own scholarship fund. So they can only give one H-R-Y-F scholarship but they can fund another child with some money of their own that they put aside. Then after they have chosen their winner it's going to get at least $5,000. They send that student to an area judging. There are nine areas in the state. And what the area does is they re-interview. So each student is going to be interviewed twice. And they have to rank them which is again a hard job. Then we H-R-Y-F board receives the number one student from each zone or area. And then we choose the $10,000 winners. So that board? Some of the board members, not the full board. As a Rotarian with the Waikiki Rotary I actually had the opportunity to participate in the interviews. We'll tell you these students will blow your mind. Their resumes, their activities in the community, they're so deserving. And so I remember it was very, very difficult for our club. Maybe it was four years ago when I was the president of Waikiki Rotary. I got to participate in that. And it was very difficult. We wanted to give every single one of those applicants the money. But we do have our own fund too. So that made it a little bit easier. So Rotary Clubs out there, make sure that you're a member of the Hawaii Rotary Youth Foundation. And I know that clubs are interviewing right now. Well, not now. They have to wait till the applications are ready. Oh, after the deadline of February 6th, they'll be setting up the interviews right away. What's the timeline for awarding? These kids are trying to get off to college in the fall. What, talk to us a little bit about, and if you don't have the exact dates, we can just direct people to the website. What will happen first is they will set up the interviews. That has to be done by the end of February. Then the areas have to do their second interviews. So that happens in early March. The areas send their number ones to us. We have our judging for the $2,000 winners on, it's either the 25th of March. And then we will get back to the clubs. They are not supposed to announce anything until we get back to them. And then we let the students know in April and the checks go out in July. The checks go out to the school with the student's name on it. But they must be notified before that. Yes, they're notified in April. Because then they can select their school. What have you. We have to know the name of the school or we can't send the check. Well, I just want to commend you for the good work that you've done. Thank you. I know that this year, one of your supporters, the Weinberg Foundation, is celebrating something very special. Yes. Let's hear a little bit about that. Okay. Well, it is, this 2019 is 25 years since they gave us over a million dollars. And actually what they did, they gave us a million, 25,000 the first year so that we didn't have to wait for interest. We could award their scholarships the very first year. So we did. We used that money. And now every year we have the interest off the million dollars and we're so grateful for that. It's just a real blessing. Yes. As a local business person, very familiar with the Weinberg Foundation. Thank you to the Weinberg Foundation for this support. It made it all possible along with Soli Sullivan's vision, which continues today under your leadership. Do I have time to say one more thing? You have time to say two more things. Okay. Well, we've had 1,750 winners. So if you are a winner or if you're a family member that has a winner, would you please thank a Rotarian? That would be just a wonderful thing. And also consider becoming a Rotarian. That would also be awesome. And the other thing is, okay, we've been doing this for 42 years. If you were a recipient over that time, would you please send us some information about you? Let us know what you're doing now because we would love to know that. That's a great suggestion and they can do that at your website. Yes. www.HawaiiRotaryYouthFoundation.org. If you Google it, it'll just pop right up for you anyway so you don't have to type all that in. I know that you've made an incredible impact in students' lives for 43 years and your leadership has been very, very important. The Hawaii Rotary Youth Foundation deserves the appreciation of the community for the good works that you've done. Thank you. So I will just lead you in that appreciation and as Christine said, join Rotary. Find out more about Rotary by visiting, we have two websites, the district in Hawaii. We have RotaryD5000.com.org as well as Rotary in Hawaii. If you've never heard about Rotary, that is a page that will give you a broad overview of what Rotary does in Hawaii. The Youth Foundation support is just one of our thousands of projects that the 53 clubs of Rotary in Hawaii actually participate in every year. The 2000 approximate Rotarians across the state of Hawaii would love to meet you if you're interested in finding out more about Rotary. So with that, I guess we're going to close and find out more about the Rotary Youth Foundation on the website if you have questions. And I want to thank you again, Christine, for being here. It's been a wonderful chat. And I hope that people out there, family members, students, their support system take advantage of these scholarships. Yes, we do too. Good. Fantastic. So with that, we are going to say a lo-ha for now and wish you all a wonderful week. And again, if you want to learn more about Rotary, please visit us online at RotaryD5000.org as well as RotaryinHawaii.org.