Volunteer Appreciation Event - Recap

Aloha,

It was a wonderful gathering last night. Check out some images from the event (Thanks Sal!) posted to the right in the blog. For those that did not make it, my comments to the group (intended for all of the volunteers) are below. What an incredible group we have!

"I cannot express to you, how honored we are to have you here in this program. You are an amazing group of people. You have taken a unique resource – this island that we are sharing tonight and the institute that it houses– and shared it with over with over 4,000 children and adults this past year. And you have touched about the same number of people off island as well – at fairs and through talks.

It is significant, what you do. To the young, you give a dream of what can be. I read to you an excerpt from a recent thank you we received from a student at Maryknoll School, “Thank you for giving us the experience of a lifetime. You really made us want to become marine biologists. Before we came, we hardly knew anything!” Or, “When I found the 15 crabs in the algae, I was stunned.”

To those of a few more years, you may give them a view back into the past, memories of visits to the island when they were young, or just a revitalizing shot in the arm. The world is still such an interesting and vital place.

You give them a glimpse of the work that we do here, the research that will help us protect and conserve our oceans and our planet.

And this is so important. This is Earth Day. A day to celebrate the blue planet the gives us life. A day to celebrate what we have done for that blue world. A day to celebrate all that you, our volunteers have given.

You have and continue to make a positive difference in a world that is easily painted bleak. And we thank you.

So on behalf of the University of Hawaii, the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, on behalf of Earth Day and Moku o loe – I sincerely thank you for your volunteer efforts.

Mahalo, Mahalo nui loa"

Mark