This Saturday will mark the official opening of the new Boys and Girls Club in Nanakuli.
It is the result of initial funding from the national football league's youth education town program and features some first of their kind "green" initiatives.
Jamen and Carmen are burning up lots of energy - but the new clubhouse is not. That's because of an innovative project here created by Hawaiian Electric. Mark Yamamoto of HECO says, "It just so happened that we had a project that we were looking for a place to, what we call deploy it, that uses photovoltaic panels, solar energy combined with what's called DC lighting."
This is the photovoltaic panel Mark is talking about. It's about saving energy and teaching the youngsters about sustainability.
"Using the natural resources, solar energy, where they're understanding a little bit more about weather, bringing that into the facility, generating electricity and creating an educational component within the website," said Carlos Perez of HECO.
"The red lines are for all of the solar energy use and the blue lines is for the grid energy that's used for the lighting," said Yamamoto.
Boys and Girls Club program director Lala Fernandez is rightly proud of the new facility. "This is like an eco-friendly, go green building so different aspects of this building is either re-cycled, reusable, saves electricity, saves water in some way or format that you see when you take a tour throughout this building."
This is the first green Youth Education Town built with the help of the NFL. The photovoltaic panels provide some thirty percent of the energy needs for the building. The inter-active videos are designed to get the youngsters to use all their energy. Fernandez adds, "We've incorporated our HOPS program that you see right in the back of me happening. It goes from dancing to martial arts to stretches, even to yoga and pilates so there's different varieties for all the kids to enjoy."
The official opening of the clubhouse will be this Saturday from ten to two. It's open to the public and will feature 14 activity stations, food, prizes and much more.
