"Kindness Connects Us" — The Class President of Waiʻanae High Competed in National Media Competitions, Found PAAC on Instagram, and Is Headed to South Korea.
One of 42 public high school students selected for the 2026 Hawaiʻi Sister-State Study Tours.
Student Snapshot
Name: Jhera Mae Paulo
Preferred Name: Jhera
School: Waiʻanae High School
Grade: 11th
Home Community: Waiʻanae, West Oʻahu
Delegation: Jeju Island
Travel Dates: March 14–25/26, 2026
Focus Interests / Extracurriculars: Class Council President; National Honor Society member; GEAR UP Club leader and Social Media Manager; Sea Rider News lead Instagram social media manager (school media program, 2 years); school media competition competitor — STN in Los Angeles and Tampa Bay; videography (active projects for 2 years); volunteered at school College Fair; annual volunteer at Alzheimer's Association Walk; journaling; reading; swimming
Career Aspirations: Service-oriented work with broad reach — she names no specific field but her essay frames it clearly: impact that extends beyond immediate contact, work rooted in empathy and community uplift; her media background suggests communications, journalism, or advocacy as possible directions
Why They Were Selected
Jhera is the Class Council President at a school with no PAAC club, who found this program through an Instagram post and applied anyway. She has been to the Philippines — including Ilocos Norte — for family, competed in national media competitions in Los Angeles and Tampa Bay, and has been building her videography skills for two years. Her essay opens with a vase of flowers and describes Waiʻanae with a clarity and tenderness that is rare. She is exactly the kind of student this program was designed to reach and rarely gets to, because there's no club at her school pointing the way.
What They're Excited About
The shock of being chosen; representing Waiʻanae High School; connecting with other students; the richness of Jeju's culture; expanding her global perspective; building bridges between Hawaiʻi and the wider world
Her Mother Didn't Say a Word. She Just Left a Vase of Jhera's Favorite Flowers on Her Desk. That's Where It All Starts.
One morning, Jhera Paulo walked into her room and found a vase of her favorite flowers. She hadn't said anything to her mother. She didn't need to — her mother had noticed she wasn't sleeping, understood without being told, and acted quietly. No announcement. Just flowers. Growing up in Waiʻanae on the West Coast of Oʻahu, Jhera learned that kindness doesn't always announce itself. A neighbor shares eggs. An aunty gives you a ride home. Selfless service, she wrote, happens on a daily basis. This spring, the Waiʻanae High junior is taking that understanding to Jeju Island as a PAAC Sister-State Student Ambassador.
Waiʻanae is a community Jhera describes honestly — poor living situations, exposure to violence, crime rates that have risen during her time as a teenager. Her essay doesn't soften that or look away. What it does instead is name what holds the community together anyway: the flowers, the eggs, the aunty, the bonds built on genuine connection. Jhera is the Class Council President, a National Honor Society member, the lead social media manager for Sea Rider News, and a two-year videographer who has competed in national media competitions in Los Angeles and Tampa Bay. She found PAAC through an Instagram post — her school has no club — and applied on her own. Her career vision is shaped entirely by what she's seen in Waiʻanae: work that reaches people beyond immediate impact, service that resonates with those out of reach.
Jhera was selected because she already understands something that takes most people years to learn. She wrote it plainly: "I have no control over the actions of others, but I can control my response and the way I treat those around me." That sentence didn't come from a leadership seminar. It came from growing up in Waiʻanae and choosing, deliberately, to be someone who leaves flowers.
"The next day, I walked inside of my room to find a vase of my favorite flowers... From her, I learned how quiet yet powerful gestures like these prove that kindness is about being attentive and treating others with humanity." — Jhera Mae Paulo, Waiʻanae High School, Class of 2027
When Jhera comes home to Waiʻanae from Jeju, she'll arrive with what she went looking for: evidence that kindness connects people across every kind of difference, and that small actions carry. For a community that already knows this and practices it every day, that kind of ambassador is exactly right.
