Every spring, Island Pacific Academy’s Secondary students trade their desks for their community on Make a Difference Day, a tradition that sends Navigators across Oʻahu to serve at sites chosen for their connection to the land, the water, and the people who call this island home.
This year, students fanned out to six sites across the island: Sea Life Park, Healthy Climate Communities, Paepae o Heʻeia, Hugs, Well Fed ʻOhana, and Sumida Farm in Aiea.
At Sumida Farm, one of Oʻahu’s last working watercress farms, thirty-nine IPA Grade 9 students spent the morning clearing a growing patch by hand. Heavy rains earlier in the season had left the crop overrun, and the work was as physical as it sounds. Students waded into the patch, pulled the spent watercress free, and loaded it bunch by bunch into wheelbarrows bound for the compost pile — then went back in and did it again.
Enzo Martines ’29 spent the first part of the morning clearing gutters elsewhere on the farm. By the time he reached the patch, the work was already underway. He picked up a rake, waded in, and started gathering bunches of old watercress, teaming up with classmate, Roman Statiukha ‘29, to keep the wheelbarrows moving steadily out of the field.
“Me and this other kid Roman, we started wheeling together,” Martines said. “I told him let’s just put a bunch on one and just wheel it out one time.”
By the end of the morning, the two had hauled roughly twenty loads.
For Martines, showing up meant showing up all the way. “If I set out to do something, I strive to be doing my best, my absolute best that I can. If I’m doing something fifty-fifty, then I feel like I don’t have passion for it, you know?” he said. “But if I’m helping the community, I’m going to put my one hundred percent in.”
When the patch was finally clear, the feeling stayed with him. “Emotionally I felt complete,” he said. “Like I felt that we finished our job and we came there to do what we needed to do.”
There was an added layer of connection for the group. Sumida Farm employs an IPA alumnus, Elijah Madayag ‘16, as Farm Chef and Assistant Operations Manager, and the students had gotten to know him on a previous visit to the farm. Knowing that one of their own now works there gave the morning extra weight. “It kind of made us all work harder,” Martines said. “We wanted to show that we weren’t just there to be there. We were there to work and help them.”
This year’s Class of 2029 has returned to Sumida Farm for three years running, a relationship Student Activities Coordinator Ruby Fernandez says students ask for by name. “I love when they come back on campus,” Fernandez said. “They do look exhausted, but their smiles are so big, and they’re genuinely just so proud to be a part of a bigger community.”
For Fernandez, the impact of days like this reaches well beyond any single site. “Every time someone asks me about Island Pacific Academy, one of the biggest highlights is our community service,” she said. “Our students have created a culture that goes beyond what we’ve been able to teach them. A day like this tells me that our students are so eager to be a part of something bigger than who they are.”
Martines left the farm with a similar sense of what the day was really about. “I think the biggest thing I took from that experience is that the kids here really want to help,” he said. “They really do have genuine feelings for other people and care about things like ʻōpala and ʻāina and things like that.”
From the watercress fields of Aiea to the shoreline at Sea Life Park, from the loʻi of Paepae o Heʻeia to the work of Hugs, Well Fed ʻOhana, and Healthy Climate Communities, IPA’s Secondary students spent the day showing up for the people, places, and ecosystems that make Oʻahu home — and came back changed by it.
See photos below from Secondary students volunteering at the other sites around O’ahu for Make a Difference Day.
