We had a great meeting  last night at the Waikiki Yacht club. There were 26 attendees including two Rotarians visiting from Japan, two guests from our new sister club,  a visiting rotarian from Santa Monica California,  and three soon to be inducted  new members. The highlight of the  evening was the signing of the sister club relationship with the  Rotary club of Premier Makati District.  Leah Quesada  president the Rotary Club of Makati Premier District  and Jonathan Okabe signed a four year agreement formalizing our sister club relationship. 

Arjun Aryal,  Andy Chamberlain, Crystal Yount , along with District 5000 member Naomi Masuno spoke about the projects and  their experience in Nepal. Our club's global service project in Nepal was conducted in the month of December  2022.

Next week we will have another exciting  meeting.  We plan to  inducted two new members,  Carol and Jerry Perone. Please welcome them into our club as well as  Dr. Niti Villinger just inducted last week.

The evening  speaker will be  our very own club member Dr. Dan Murariu speaking about our soon to be completed global project  in Romania. 

Last week was an exciting and hectic weekend  for me attending the  southwest rotary president elect training. As most of you know Rotary focuses on health (eradicate  polio), literacy, clean water, peace and conflict resolution, disaster response, and mental health.

These broad areas are the  basis for our club's community, and international projects.  We support  students in high school(interact club), and college students (rotoract clubs).

There is a yearly scholorship for college bound students.  We highlight different  member's  vocation. Finally we have fun and have lasting friendships.

I leave you with a message about  one of the keynote  speakers at my conference.  Erin Gruwell is the teacher who taught English and writing to 150 Compton Los Angeles high school students. The  students contributed to a book called the " Freedom Writers Diary" which became a. New York Times Bestseller.  The students began their literary journey with reading the "Diary Of Ann Frank" , and commenced writing their stories of their life and struggles, and finally making a goal of inviting  to their class the woman, who secretly helped the Frank family with food and other support until they were  discovered by the Nazis.The 93 year old woman travelled from Europe to visit the class. A movie was made called the "Freedom Writers", starring Hillary Swank. Please read the book or view the movie.

Thank you for enduring this long message. Contact me if you would like to share a. Service "aha" moment you had experienced .

Mahalo,

And thank you for your contributions to  rotary, 

Jonathan Okabe 

President of Honolulu Sunset Rotary club