She's the Class of 2027 Student Council President, a Jiujitsu Practitioner, and a Future Doctor From Aiea. First Stop: Ilocos Norte.
One of 42 public high school students selected for the 2026 Hawaiʻi Sister-State Study Tours.
Student Snapshot
Name: Olivia Barth
Preferred Name: Olivia
School: Aiea High School
Grade: 11th
Home Community: Aiea, Central Oʻahu
Delegation: Ilocos Norte/Ilocos Sur
Travel Dates: March 14–25/26, 2026
Focus Interests / Extracurriculars: Brazilian jiujitsu; Aiea High tennis; Student Council President, Class of 2027; church volunteer; Life Teen Catholic youth program; OYYAM Catholic leadership retreat (Evangelization & Catechesis Hawaiʻi); regular exercise; first international trip; multiple state relocations as military child
Career Aspirations: Medicine — she names this explicitly in her acceptance reflection, framing the trip as building leadership abilities toward a future career in medicine
Why They Were Selected
Olivia has moved from place to place her entire life as a military child, and Aiea is the only community that has ever felt like home. She is the student council president for her class, a jiujitsu practitioner, a Catholic youth leader, and a student planning to go into medicine. Her essay is brief but its core insight is genuinely earned — that Aiea's diversity is not incidental but foundational, and that she knows what it feels like to arrive somewhere as an outsider and be welcomed anyway.
What They're Excited About
Shock and excitement at being selected; meeting new people; exploring the world; learning leadership lessons to bring back to Hawaiʻi; connecting cross-cultural experience to her medical career
She's Moved So Many Times She Lost Count. Aiea Is the Only Place That's Ever Felt Like Home. Now She's Going to Ilocos Norte.
Olivia Barth has lived in a lot of places. As a mixed-race military child, she moved from state to state enough times that no single place stuck — until Aiea. Something about the diversity there, the way different cultures and traditions meet in that community, made her want to stay. She became the student council president for the Class of 2027. She trained in Brazilian jiujitsu. She started working toward a career in medicine. She's never left the country. This spring, the Aiea High junior is going to the Philippines as a PAAC Sister-State Student Ambassador.
Olivia is active in ways that go in every direction — jiujitsu and tennis for sport, Catholic youth leadership through Life Teen and a diocesan retreat program, student government for her school, and regular service through her church. She's planning to go into medicine, and she sees the leadership and cross-cultural skills she's building now as directly relevant to that future — the ability to relate to people whose lives look different from hers, to show up for a community and be useful to it. That instinct was shaped by moving constantly and finally finding a place in Aiea that held.
Olivia was selected because she already understands something about arriving somewhere new and learning to belong — and then choosing to stay and give back. Every place she lived before Aiea was temporary. Aiea wasn't. Going to Ilocos Norte is the next version of that same instinct: arriving somewhere new, paying attention, and bringing something real home.
"Aiea is the only place that felt like home to me." — Olivia Barth, Aiea High School, Class of 2027
When Olivia returns to Aiea from Ilocos Norte, she'll come back to the community that finally held her — with a wider sense of the world and a sharper sense of what she wants to do in it. For a military kid who spent years looking for home, that return matters.
