By Harlan Rose
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On Oct. 13, MHS’ Leo Club partnered with other organizations at the annual Children and Youth Festival at the state capitol to help raise awareness of child abuse in Hawaii. Their participation at the festival marked their first attempt this year at trying to infuse a love of community service in its members.
“It was fairly early in the year and so to try to motivate some of our newer members especially to start attending events, we were pretty successful,” said club adviser Curtis Ogi, “Getting to see the kids show that initiative and start addressing the topic of community service was a good experience.”
Club members focused their attention specifically on the prevention of child abuse. Club board member Junior Ryan Nip said, “We don’t want our kids to be paranoid when they (are growing) up. Being beaten by your parent is a traumatic thing.” Club President Junior Anthony Menor added, “It happens and must be prevented. By making that problem the center of attention then more people will be concerned by this problem and will hopefully garner a life of good child care.”
The Leo Club spent their time at the festival playing games, interacting and bonding with young children. Nip said, “We helped support child abuse (prevention) and we passed out fliers, there was games that the kids could play and it was just fun.” Ogi added, “They had a rock climbing wall, children’s games, crafts, coloring, all kinds of different stuff.”
A secondary goal of the Leo Club was to try and get the newer members to start participating in community service events. Ogi said, “We had a lot of new members show up and (the) members that did show up had a lot of fun and definitely said they learned a lot.” Menor added, “I felt that the club really improved in terms of organization (and) because (of that) I feel that the project was a success.”
When they weren’t interacting with the children, club members got to participate in the various events and activities the festival put together. “We got to walk around, there (were) a lot of performances, (it) was pretty cool seeing (some) dancing, and there was some free food, so I got to eat a good lunch,” Menor said. Club members also had the opportunity to bond with each other and their adviser. Nip said, “(I liked) messing around with Mr. Ogi whenever I had free time and it was probably the best time ever.”
Ogi was pleased with the overall outcome of the project. “I’m proud of my Leos for taking that step to, as a whole, as a club, all of our members, making that commitment (to) give back to our community,” he said.
The Leo Club has many more volunteer projects planned throughout the rest of the year to try to raise awareness of the importance of community service.
