Winning Words To Help Fund Charity
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A unique contest at Kaneohe Elementary School steers sixth-graders toward charitable deeds and inspires them toward good writing skills at the same time.
The third annual “Charity Is” competition gave cash awards this spring to its three top student entries, and then half of that prize money went to the writer’s preferred charity.
“I started the contest in hopes that in writing and researching charitable causes, some or many of the kids’ hearts would be turned to one of compassion and selflessness,” explained Dennis Hida, a supporter of the school who works for Farmers Insurance Hawaii.
First place went to Tyler Chinen, who was moved by the work of American Cancer Society, seeing how it helped her grandfather, who succumbed to lung cancer in 2008.
“With me being his only grandchild,” she wrote, “I suffered with him as he slowly died by life-taking cancer. As I watched him strain himself just to do daily activities, I felt the day he wasn’t sitting next to me at the dinner table was the day that I had lost one of the most valuable people in my entire life.”
Chinen learned that ACS helps cancer victims in many ways.
“People who survive cancer are very lucky,” she stated. “But for those who can’t always be lucky, they deserve a cancer research center to help. I think that it doesn’t matter how you got cancer, but that everyone deserves a second chance.”
Tasha Oba took second place for her essay on the Humane Society. “Animals don’t know that they are going to be beaten or go to a bad home,” she wrote, “they are just looking for a place to call home and someone to love them ... The Humane Society helps starved and neglected animals become positive, happy and energetic.”
Willie Ewaliko’s essay on Aloha United Way took third, and he learned that it helps 500,000 people yearly. “AUW can only continue to help (if) we give our extra money to them,” he wrote. “My mother donates every year and has done so for over 20 years.”
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