Honolulu Council honors Winners Camp on 40 years serving youth

Council Member Talbot and Chair Waters presented an honorary certificate recognizing Winners Camp’s 40th anniversary and thanked founder Dolores Malulani Gregoire and current leadership for decades of youth leadership programming.

Speakers said Winners Camp’s Leadership Academy has served roughly 20,000 youth and that about 1,500 former campers have returned as volunteer leaders and staff. The council noted the organization’s focus on the “5 R’s” (respect, responsibility, resourcefulness, resilience and restraint) as central to its curriculum and highlighted scholarship support that has enabled foster children, Native Hawaiian children and youth with financial or health challenges to attend.

Remarks recounted the program’s move to a property on the edge of Kamehameha Ridge in Hawai‘i Kai (a former missile site transformed into camp facilities) around 2001 and credited support from military, community, nonprofit and business partners. Jeanette Marcoluso, the camp’s executive director who began as a camper, was introduced in the chamber along with camp leadership.

The presentation was ceremonial; the transcript records council remarks and the honorary certificate but no binding city action or budgetary decision associated with the recognition.