CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARBULLETIN.COM Anastasia Ayers, right, stood yesterday with her mother, Joana Bright, at a luncheon celebration of the 2nd Century Scholars Program.

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Scholarship program
honors graduates

Anastasia Ayers is the first person to graduate from college in her family, thanks to a Bank of Hawaii scholarship program that has mentored 100 students in eight years.

Bank of Hawaii celebrated the graduation yesterday of 70 of the first 100 students selected in 1997, a success rate that bank Vice Chairman Alton Kuioka called "fantastic, unbelievable."

At a luncheon at the Hilton Hawaiian Village honoring the 70 students, Kuioka said a 50 percent rate of graduation would have been deemed a success for the first-of-its-kind program in Hawaii.

The cost of the 2nd Century Scholars Program was $5 million, providing each student with up to $10,000 in tuition a year over four years at a college of their choice, and life skills training, he said. The program was launched in 1997 to commemorate the company's 100th anniversary.

Ayers, 22, who graduated from the University of Hawaii at Hilo with a degree in psychology, said the guidance provided by the program from the time students were in the ninth grade helped them stay on track to getting a college degree.

They were given mentors in high school who made sure they achieved the scholastic standards of colleges they were interested in, she said. Neighbor island residents were flown in to participate in community service projects, but they also visited Hawaiian Waters Adventure Park and took part in other fun activities to help the students bond with one another.

Kuioka said the students were given practice college entrance exams and had a chance to live in dormitories for a week, experiencing life away from home and learning to take responsibility for studying and getting to class on time. The community project activities were important to team building, leadership training and helping students bond with others who had similar goals in life.

Ayers said she has worked full time throughout college, most recently with at-risk teenagers. She wants to work in child and family services because "I have always been interested in helping people."

Her mother, Joana Bright of Hilo, said: "Without this program, she never would have had the chance to go to college. It started in the ninth grade and gave them something to look forward to. It built their self-esteem and helped them to push for (a degree) and think of what they were going to do in the future.

"When she was in high school, she would say, 'I'm going to be this,' then, 'I'm going to be that.' And she could say this because she knew she would have the chance," Bright said.

Bright did everything she could to support her daughter's pursuit of higher education because she knew she had to break the cycle of getting low-income jobs and getting pregnant at too young an age like she and her sisters.

"I wanted her to get a better education, be better than me," said Bright, a single mother of three children.

Bright said she wanted her daughter to have a career, which no one in the family ever had.