Miki K. Nishizawa | 2016 National Crime Victims' Service Awards Tribute Video

MIKI NISHIZAWA: Domestic violence and battering is not a behavior that we’re born with. It’s a learned behavior. My friends and I don’t ever talk about that kind of issue, because it was always seen as an inappropriate thing to discuss openly. 

When I was a sophomore in high school, I decided to become a part of the Youth For Safety Club. We connected with a domestic violence agency here in Hawaii. And we were able to get these facts and these stories about domestic violence that is in my own community. 

So these are a bunch of warning signs that could categorize a relationship as being abusive or unhealthy. . . 

I was offered an opportunity to prepare a presentation, and the participants at the Youth Conferences were shocked, because they’ve never heard of this issue before. A lot of the schools pledged that they would make domestic violence an issue that they would advocate in their own communities. We’ve been doing this domestic violence awareness for a while, and we’ve had several members come into our club that shared about their personal experiences that have been exposed to domestic violence. 

I was very inspired that they actually had the courage now that they’re in the Youth for Safety Club. It really has changed their mindset on how they look at things, and it really showed how powerful awareness could be just by itself. 

We want to able to pilot a user-friendly curriculum, open to all ages, available for teachers so that we could start educating the youth. If we get it officially mandated by the Department of Education, then we could open it to the rest of the schools in the state. Domestic violence has always been just a passion of mine.