Introducing Our Second Winner for 2023 – Alika Hunn

Since we presented our first Scholarship in 2018, we have only had one award a year. Today, as I write this, I feel a tremor of thrill to write that we were very fortunate to be able award three Scholarships this year - the first year we have gone nationwide in the search for talented and deserving young people to help.

And so, without witttering on further, I’d like to introduce Alika Hunn to you as our second recipient.

About a week after announcing that we were now a Scholarship that was available nationwide and that we would take applications from the candidates (rather than have them recommended to us), we received our first application!

This was somewhat of a surprise for us as we had designed the application form to be a lengthy process. We anticipated it would take applicants about 2 months to get through all the pre-requisites before sending it in. This candidate had smashed the application in spectacular fashion, and it was very well presented.

Well... Alika is a young woman on whom no moss will ever grow. She’s on a roll with a fierce determination to meet her future head on. Theres no idle moments for Alika wondering what will be in her future or what her career will shape up to look like.

Alika has grown up in rural Taranaki, where amazing careers for women are very thin on the ground in the rural and male dominated professions. Opportunities looked a bit naff. That was until Alika attended a schools career evening and saw that being a pilot was an absolutely brilliant career to have.

Having read that only 5% of the world’s pilots are women – and less than 1% of airline captains are women, she thought it was about time those crappy statistics changed – and she’d make sure they would. Alika had experienced an epiphany – just like our benefactor, John Pauwels had (and at the same age). Alika was going to become a pilot come what may!

Alika and the love of her life

But, of course, there was the usual hitch in the plan. Finance. Being in a deeply rural environment, the chances of earning an income to pay for lessons are hard to come by. Alika thought about this and came up with her solution.

Everyone she knew had dogs. Stinky, shaggy dogs. Dogs that really needed a good wash and a groom. With no groomer less than 45kms away she decided that was where her income would come from and Alika started up her dog grooming services. She is earning enough to almost pay for her lessons. But not quite.

A satisfied customer, complete with an impressive pile of removed hair!

Alika has a strong sense of community. Of all the candidates and recipients that have come to our attention only one other has had the level of commitment to their community that Alika has. Despite only being 16 she has :-

•              Logged 81.5 hours as a volunteer at the Opunake Life saving Club last season

•              As well as actual Life Saving duties, she also coaches and mentors young Life

Savers

•              Been a Youth Ambassador at Lake Rotokare

•              Started the Predator Free movement in Opunake

•              Received the Peter Blake Young Leader Award

•              So far this year, completed 20 hours of community service via her School

For someone who gives so much back to her community, excels in her school work and has such an unfettered passion to become a pilot (she is rapidly closing in on her PPL) we thought we would like to step in and give her a helping hand.

We approached David Meale, one of our sponsors, to tell him about Alika and he was quite taken with her attitude to life and her commitment to others. He loved the idea of sponsoring a strong woman into the life of an aviatrix – he just knew that his late wife, Helen, would have been delighted to have met Alika.

We met Alika in person on the 4th October as she flew down to complete her assessments. We were all immediately taken with her. She has a maturity and presence that far exceeds her age. Despite the intense pressures of the day, she was well measured and appeared relaxed, taking it all in her stride.

It was only a few days later that we got her results in and determined that she would be the second winner for 2023. Alika will start training at IAANZ here in Christchurch in 2025.

We can’t wait to present her with her trophy early in 2024, when school begins again.  Well done Alika!