It was a big day for three Kaiser High School sophomores, and a very rare opportunity. On May 21st, 2026, students Karen “Azuki” Kaneko, Mia Matsuura and Cody Nakajima were given the opportunity to present their personal projects to students of the Hiroshima Global Academy at the Hilton Hawaiian Village as part of the Hawaii-Japan Sister Summit which was taking place that day.
In October of 2025, the Class of 2028 began work on their personal project; the final form of assessment in the IB Middle Years Programme (MYP). It involves both a product and a report detailing the planning, process and what was learned during the Personal Project experience. About 84% of students in the class of 2028 submitted their project, yet only about 69% of projects received a passing score of 3 or above. Those who did and were joining the IB Diploma Programme or Career-Related Programme became eligible for a scholarship that was given out on May 7th. A few weeks before the summit, a group of four students were invited to present their projects to the students of Hiroshima Global Academy (HiGA), located on The island of Ōsakikamijima.
During the conference, students would present their projects one by one via a zoom meeting between themselves and the students of HiGA, and HiGA students would also present their own personal projects and Creativity Activity Service (CAS) projects to the Kaiser students, with the two groups alternating presenters. After presentations, students would be allowed to ask each other questions about the project. The conference lasted about 4-5 hours, starting at about 12:40pm and going on until around 3:30pm.
The Hawai’i Department Of Education received its own booth during the summit, run by current Haha’ione principal Cappy Goo, located right in between the booths for Shibuya City and Yurihama Town. The Hawai’i-Japan Sister Summit itself was hosted in the Coral Ballrooms of the Hilton Hawaiian Village in Waikiki. Hiroshima Global Academy and Kaiser High School have had a history involving each other for a few years, with the two schools signing a sister school agreement with each other in 2022, as revealed by principal Tomonori Ichihara during the conference. It has an extremely diverse group of students from all around the world, most international students coming from the United States. HiGA is a junior and senior boarding school involving grades 7-9 and 10-12, with the presenters being in the 11th grade. Similar to Kaiser High School, HiGA is proudly promoted as an IB school which integrates the IB Diploma Programme into its curriculum. It also supports the IB MYP programme for students in the lower grades.
