Today we announced the 2022 class of Paubox Kahikina Scholarship recipients. As I wrote a welcome email to the new class, I realized it's now apparent there are several big ideas behind the scholarship.
This post will explain these big ideas.
As a recap, the primary objective of the Paubox Kahikina Scholarship is to encourage Native Hawaiians to pursue careers in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) or technology.
The scholarship is recurring in nature. In other words, recipients receive $1,000 per year until they graduate.
See related: Paubox awards scholarships to Native Hawaiian college students pursuing STEM majors [KITV News]
Trends that don’t change are big ideas. These big ideas are simple and obvious. Yet they are worth paying attention to, even if they appear banal.
In our case, we can build a resounding network of Native Hawaiians in STEM and technology around big ideas that will remain stable over time.
When it comes to our scholarship, we know recipients want financial aid and access to our professional network. These are big ideas that will not change over time.
For example, ten years from now there is a zero percent chance a recipient will come up to me and say, "I really love the Paubox Kahikina Scholarship, but could you provide less financial aid?"
The same goes for an awardee asking me, "Big fan of the scholarship, but could you do away with access to your professional network?"
If we already know current and future scholarship recipients will always want financial aid and access to our network, then we know it's perpetually a good use of time and resources to focus on these big ideas.
These big ideas are therefore my commitments to everyone in the Paubox Kahikina Scholarship network- recipients and advisors alike.
See also: Our Big Ideas at Paubox: Security, Reliability, and Ease of Use