From Kalihi to Okinawa: Farrington's Aaliyah Gabriel Is Representing Hawaiʻi on the World Stage
One of 42 public high school students selected for the 2026 Hawaiʻi Sister-State Study Tours.
Student Snapshot
Name: Aaliyah Marie Gabriel
School: W.R. Farrington High School
Grade: 11th (Health Academy)
Home Community: Kalihi, Honolulu
Delegation: Okinawa
Travel Dates: March 14–25, 2026
Focus Interests / Extracurriculars: Volleyball (outside hitter/middle back, 11 years), soccer, dancing, drawing/anime illustration, HOSA member, VP intern, Health Academy, Jamba Juice
Career Aspirations: Aspiring pharmacist or anesthesiologist
Why They Were Selected
Aaliyah is a born connector who moves between the volleyball court, the health science classroom, and two distinct cultural heritages with equal ease. She is a student who has been thinking deeply about identity, opportunity, and what it means to carry Hawaiʻi with her into the world. Her goal to study abroad, her instinct to bring what she learns back to her community, and her grounded sense of self make her a natural ambassador.
What They're Excited About
Experiencing Okinawa firsthand for the first time; exploring Japan as a preview for potential study abroad after graduation; representing Hawaiʻi and building the story she plans to carry into her future in healthcare.
Aaliyah Was Pacing Her Room When She Found Out. Now She's Headed to Okinawa.
When the acceptance email arrived, Aaliyah Gabriel couldn't sit still. She stood up from her bed and walked back and forth across her room, rereading the words on her screen — the ones telling her she'd been selected as a PAAC Sister-State Student Ambassador to Okinawa. For a junior from Kalihi who grew up watching UH Wahine volleyball games and hearing her mother say keep chasing your dreams, even a small island holds big opportunities — this was the moment she'd been building toward.
Aaliyah is a Health Academy student at W.R. Farrington High School with her sights set on becoming a pharmacist or anesthesiologist. She's also an 11-year volleyball veteran, a soccer player, a dancer, an artist, a HOSA member, and a VP intern who works weekends at Jamba Juice. But what makes her stand out isn't the list — it's the way she moves through the world. Half Puerto Rican and half Filipino, raised primarily within her Filipino heritage and deeply rooted in Hawaiʻi, Aaliyah has spent her life navigating between cultures with curiosity rather than confusion.
She was selected as an ambassador because she brings something rare to the role: cultural instinct grounded in lived experience. Having traveled back and forth to the Philippines throughout her life, and having grown up in a Hawaiʻi shaped by generations of migration and shared culture, she's developed a perspective that's hard to teach. She can, as she puts it, "connect to someone else's home without invading it." That quality will serve her — and the students and communities she meets — well in Okinawa.
This trip is where Aaliyah's next chapter begins. She's seriously considering studying abroad after graduation, and Okinawa is where she'll start gathering the real material. When she comes home in late March, she plans to do what she's always done — talk story, show up for her community, and make sure the people around her know the world is bigger and more open than it might seem from a small island. For Kalihi, that's not a small thing.
Aaliyah is a constituent of House District [#] and Senate District [#], represented by [Legislator Name] in the Hawaiʻi State Legislature. ([VERIFY WITH DISTRICT LOOKUP])
