YWCA Kauaʻi awards $8,000 in scholarships

View the following article by Dennis Fujimoto on The Garden Island website here.LIHU‘E — The YWCA of Kaua‘i Executive Director Renae Hamilton-Cambeilh and a good amount of the YWCA board, including Scholarship Committee Chair Katie Parkinson, celebrated the presentation of $8,000 in scholarships Thursday night with the scholarship recipients and their families at the YWCA of Kaua‘i Women’s Center.This is the sixth year the YWCA of Kaua‘i has awarded scholarships to young women heading to college as a way to help the young women become empowered through the education they get.“This was a banner year,” Hamilton-Cambeilh said. “There were 17 applicants, and selecting the finalists was a hard task for the board members.”A YWCA Board of Directors scholarship for $2,000 was presented to Kaua‘i High School graduate Adrianna Hernandez, who will be heading to Harvard University, an institution she selected because of the community surrounding it.“I want to come back to Kaua‘i after I attain my degree in psychology,” Hernandez said. “And, if that’s not possible, I want to be able to do my work so it makes an impact on people here.”Francesca Bivens, a graduate of Island School, is able to attend college now, her dad said, after she earned one of three Pay It Forward scholarships for $2,000 each. She will be heading to Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, where her older brother goes to school, with an eye on studying human organ development, a field closely related to psychology.Coral Haeger, a graduate of Kapa‘a High School, will be leaving in a few weeks for the University of Colorado at Boulder to study media production with the help of a $2,000 Pay It Forward scholarship.Jaylynn Pascua, graduating from Kamehameha Schools Kapalama, is the fourth scholarship recipient, and the third of the $2,000 Pay It Forward scholarship. She is heading to the University of Oregon to study political science.