In the Spirit of Christmas

December 2019

The Kiwanis of Pearl Harbor have been helping The Salvation Army by taking the last shift of the Angel Tree at Pearlridge Center. The Angel Tree ran from November 29th until December 14th. We get to work with our Key Clubs. I got to work with the Key Club from Mililani High School, and they did a fantastic job. I saw a few of their parents who dropped off their Key Clubber or came to pick them up. Mr. Leong teaches AP English and is the faculty advisor to our Mililani Key Club and Chess Club. Our Key Clubbers ranged from freshmen to seniors. I always knew the Key Clubbers were busy, but I didn’t know how busy they are. We appreciate our Key Clubs, their families and their faculty advisors.

On Dec. 21st at the Kroc Center in Kapolei, Kay, Carol and I got to help with distributing the gifts collected at the Angel Tree. It was a busy day but so grateful that families could celebrate Christmas. The public’s generosity was overwhelming and The Salvation Army had everything organized from providing huge bags to put gifts in and briefing us on what to do. This would be a great project for Kiwanis Clubs and Key Clubs to participate in. The Salvation Army even provided a break room for their volunteers and kept us fed and hydrated. Our Waipahu Key Clubbers were runners and helped with the shoppers. Princess, president of our Waipahu Key Club and Jhan Ray were fantastic and very gracious with the shoppers they assisted. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to All!

~ Susan Wong

Key Club Week

November 2019

It’s November already! We just had our Key Club Takeover Meeting which featured our 5 Key Clubs; Aiea High School, Leilehua High School, Mililani High School, Pearl City High School and Waipahu High School. They all did a fantastic job hosting the meeting and program and welcomed Megan Cabbage and Rick Ahn of the Salvation Army.

Pres Estella and Sec Emilee of Aiea Key Club setup the program, did the opening and closing of the meeting. Leilehua Pres BJ and VP Kaeddie did the ice breaker—two truths and one lie, and we had to guess which one was the lie. Pearl City Pres Vicky provided the decorations. Mililani Pres Meilin did Key Club Knowledge—it was very informative and hard to guess with the multiple choice answers offered. Waipahu VP Princess and Historian Jhan Ray asked each Key Club to write down any improvements they wanted to see in their club. All Key Club Leaders have a desire to have their clubs grow and to be able to have more projects.

Roy Fujinaka, Pearl Harbor’s keeper of our Angel Tree calendar completed the schedule for the month of November and December. Megan Cabbage and Rick Ahn provided statistics from the 2018 Angel Tree. With our 5 Key Clubs, The Salvation Army collected 10,000 gifts and was able to distribute them to 2,000 individuals. This year’s Angel Tree at Pearlridge Center will be from November 29th until December 14th.

Have a great Thanksgiving (we have much to be thankful for).

~ Susan Wong

What It Means To Be A Volunteer

October 2019

The definition of a volunteer is “a person of his own free will offer himself for service or duty.”

The Pearl Harbor Kiwanis is a small club and we try to help out where possible all year long. Our current project is making hospital dolls for pediatric units so the children and families can understand the procedures the child needs to go through. Myra Lau, mother of our member Kathryn, has sewn 100s of dolls for our club and Roy Fujinaka, one of our members has stuffed 100s of dolls while watching football.

Key Club is our service leadership programs and we try to help them become more aware of their community. We have five (5) high schools that we help sponsor; Aiea High School, Leilehua High School, Mililani High School, Pearl City High School and Waipahu High School. This year I’d like us to help our Key Clubbers to make volunteerism a priority. It doesn’t take a lot of time to make volunteerism a priority and we all get to learn as we volunteer.

Find out more about us and please come visit us at our general meeting held on the first Tuesday of the month at the Aiea Public Library Conference Room at 7:00pm.

~ Susan Wong

A Time to Reflect …

September 2019

Key Club did not exist at my high school while I was there. The year after I graduated from Aiea High School, my former Japanese teacher and second mother, Ruby Sonomura, started up the Key Club. Years later, I told her I was hired as a counselor at Leilehua High School. She did not miss a beat and immediately told me to help her old friend Keith Fukumoto, the Key Club Advisor at Leilehua, with the Key Club. That was the beginning of my association with the K-Family and with each passing year, my understanding, commitment and involvement with the Kiwanis Family deepened culminating with my Presidency this past year.

As I reflect on my year as the President of our small but mighty Kiwanis Club of Pearl Harbor, I am amazed and impressed with the tremendous amount of volunteer hours our club performs each year. Although our name is the Kiwanis Club of Pearl Harbor, our membership stretches from the East in Honolulu to the North in Wahiawa and to the way out West in Waianae. Our club members give willingly of their time to volunteer whenever needed, supervise, attend meetings, plan events, take pictures, update our Website, fundraise, create videos, make phone calls on specific dates to reserve our meeting site, answer emails, compile and file reports, work with other organizations and Kiwanis Clubs, and countless other ways to serve our schools and communities. Without this wonderful group of volunteers, the five Key Clubs we sponsor would need to find another sponsoring Kiwanis Club, would not be able to do many of their service projects, and would not be able to attend conferences to name a few.

With that I would like to express my sincerest and most heartfelt thank you so very much to the members of our Kiwanis Club of Pearl Harbor! Your unwavering commitment to serve and to our club, your enormous heart of gold, and your tremendous patience with me as your President continues to make our small club one of the mightiest volunteer organizations I am extremely proud to be a member of!

~ Judy Watanabe

Kiwanis Object 5: Altruistic service

August 2019

Although my drive to our August Mighty Mo service project was a brief seventeen minutes, I pondered on the thousands of service hours our Kiwanis Club of Pearl Harbor and our sponsored Key Clubs contribute each year to bettering our schools, homes, communities, and nation. Collectively, we make a difference contributing to the lives of more people than we will ever know. We are thanked by many for the hours of service we provide but there are service projects we complete that we never meet the benefactors of our labor. For example, a simple yet meaningful piece of history is forged from original Battleship Missouri teak into bookmarks. On the last Saturday of each month, our Kiwanis Club of Pearl Harbor Family works together sometimes making these bookmarks. The bookmarks are sold at the Battleshop where millions of visitors from all over the world see them, possibly purchase them and take this piece of history home. Our volunteer hours contribute to conversation starters, “the place I fell asleep” markers in books, a meaningful gift for history buffs, and a wonderful memory of a trip to where World War II ended. Community service is who we are and we do not need accolades or thank yous for the service we do. And since we will never meet all the benefactors of our service, I want to personally thank everyone in our Kiwanis Family for your commitment to doing community service. A sincere and heartfelt, thank you so very much, your service is appreciated by more than you know!

~ Judy Watanabe