Our greeters today were Pulele Pascual and Jacen Friess. Pulele then announced the guests for the club. We had our guest speaker, Jaya Dupuis whom we are very grateful to have present and speak later! 

Lorraine Shin  brought soon-to-be Rotarian Alicia Valley! Rotarian Connie Ichinose brought guest, Guy Nicholson and also brought Annette Mattox with the help of Rauchel Lyons! Sam  Willocks brought guests Meera Decourt and Shawn Dudgeon who both work with Sam at Day-Lum and will hopefully be future Rotarians as well!

Naomi Menor was $500 happy and donated to The Rotary Foundation! Thank you Naomi for
your consistent generosity!

Gail Takaki was $25 happy for the work that youth services has done this year and also proud of Arden for his growth and his bright future.

Helen Hemmes was $$$ happy as well!

Also related to being happy and helping the world, our President Newton is riding his bike
around Taiwan to end Polio! To make sure your donations are credited to out wonderful
President Newton, you can donate online or write a check payable to TRF but make sure to
include fundraiser ID 5494 Newton Chu. If you have any questions, you can also see Treena
Breyfogle.

Our guest of Honor, Alicia came up with President Newton to join and be a part of a global community with wonderful, life saving projects spanning local communities to around the world! President Newton gave her beautiful Rotary Club of Hilo pins and we welcome Rotarian Alicia to our very special club!

Cooking lunch for Hawaii Home for Recovery – Thursdays, weekly. Please text Grace Manipol-Larson to sign up at (808)640-1540.

Reading in Kindergarten – Please call Shirley Woods at (755)846-0627.

Pet Therapy – Every third Tuesday. Please call Connie if interested at (808)896-4926.

Hawaii Rotary Foundation Award

Every year, our club gives a bright and aspiring youth a scholarship to further their education
and growth and this year’s recipient was Arlen Noguchi. Arlen is a graduating senior at Waiakea High School and will be attending Harvey Mudd College in California dual majoring in Computer Science and Climate Studies! Arlen could not make todays meeting but he sent us a video to show his appreciation and what the scholarship award means to him and his ascendent future! We congratulate Arlen and wish him the best in college.

Unite for Good

Rotarian Chay Johnson is looking for goods and items for bingo prizes for the residents of the Yukio Okutsu Veteran’s Care Home. It is a very worthy mission organized by Chay so if you have any new items and snacks, please see Chay at our rotary meetings or there will be a box to donate.

On a side note, Chay and Brian Johnson will be going to Uganda in June through the Rotaplast Organization with the goal of eliminating the burden of cleft lip and/or palate, burn scarring, and other deformities so talk about global community service above self!

Rotary at Work

Hawaii Home for Recovery – May 16 th , 8 am – 12 pm. Refreshments provided and bring
gloves, sunscreen, hats, and cleanup equipment.

Food Fight for Hunger Carnival – May 16 th , 1 pm – 3 pm. Bring canned food or $$$ to donate

Walk and Talk with Harvey Tajiri – May 22nd, 10:00 am – 1:00 pm. Join the mini mixer for exercise and good fellowship.

Hilo Brewfest – July 11 but looking for volunteers for before, during, and after the event. Also still looking for sponsorships as we are $23,000 short of the goal. Please help in sponsoring or finding a sponsor for is ever important fundraising event for our club!

Jaya Dupuis is the founder and president of the non-profit, Hawaii Environmental Restoration. The organizations main mission is the restoration and preservation of native lowland rainforest of Keauʻohana State Forest Reserve. Keauʻohana is the largest intact lowland rainforest so it is a very important cultural and ecological site.

Some of the projects they are working on is putting up a fence line to keep pigs and other
invasive species out of the forest; preventing the spread of Rapid Ohia Death, hand picking
invasive plant species; treating large Waiwai trees with poison; clearing the kukae maile; and
planting and cultivating native plants.

HER has volunteers working on the forest projects as well as host school groups for education and assistance with service projects. They are mainly funded by grants and donations. Please visit their website here for more information and we can help directly by volunteering or donating but there are also things we can do in our own backyard and community to help such as plant food and native species and weed and control invasive, nonnative plants.

The Four Way Test was led by Debbie Cabral. Meeting ended at 1:08 pm. Thank you very much and we will see you at the next meeting!