The 2026 PAAC Student Showcase celebrated the scholars, leaders, and changemakers Hawaiʻi is sending into the world.

Eighty-three people gathered along Honolulu's waterfront that Saturday: 51 students from 17 schools across four islands, their families, their advisors, and the community members who've made PAAC's work possible. What they came to witness was a culmination. Across the year, those same students had moved through nearly every program PAAC runs — Academic WorldQuest, Global Vision Summit, LEAD Summit, Sister-State Study Tours to Okinawa, Jeju, and Ilocos Norte and Sur. Showcase is where all of those threads come together in one room.

The morning opened with Distinguished Club recognition — and what distinguished clubs actually require is worth naming. To earn Gold, a club must complete SDG curriculum lessons, organize a Global Action Project, and accumulate 35 or more points over the course of the year. This is a portrait of what it looks like when an advisor keeps a club room open every week and students continue to walk through the door. Seven clubs reached Gold this year: Campbell High School, Kalani High School, Hawaiʻi Technology Academy–Waipahu, Kealakehe High School, Konawaena High School, Maui High School, and St. Andrew's Schools–The Priory. Kailua High School, Radford High School, Farrington High School, and the PAAC Virtual Chapter earned Silver. Waipahu High School and Hawaiʻi Technology Academy–Kona earned Bronze. Fourteen schools. A full year of showing up.

The academic scholarship recognition followed. Ella Balanza of Roosevelt High School, Conner Birdsall of Hawaiʻi Technology Academy–Waipahu, and Shayna McElhannon, also of HTA–Waipahu, each received the Paul S. Honda Scholarship — a $1,000 award for graduating seniors committed to Asian studies and international affairs. Thalia Hoapili of HTA–Waipahu received the Eddie Tangen Award, given to a rising leader in grades 9–11 nominated by their own peers. That last detail matters: this one isn't decided by a committee. It's decided by the students who know them best.

Then came the travelers. Eighteen students will depart this summer for Taiwan on the Freeman Summer Study Tour — Linking Legacies, Forging Futures — to engage with the institutions, histories, and people that connect Hawaiʻi to the broader Asia-Pacific. Ten students will travel to Palau on the Takitani Summer Study Tour — Honoring Oceans, Inspiring Change — carrying Hawaiʻi's own relationship with the ocean into conversations about what it means to protect it. Hearing their names read in that room, against the backdrop of everything their classmates had already accomplished this year, made both destinations feel earned.

The morning closed with the Senior Send-Off. Ninety-five graduating seniors were celebrated, and Coree Kobayashi of Kealakehe High School delivered the senior address.

PAAC doesn't hand students a worldview. It builds the conditions — the clubs, the competitions, the scholarships, the plane tickets — for young people from Hawaiʻi to encounter the world on their own terms and come back changed.

If a student in your life should be in that room next year, share this story and help them find their way to PAAC. 🌺