A message from the Kona Outdoor President Marni Herkes:

The special event telephone number for “Art in the Garden” reservations and information is 640-0852 although 331-2426 will get you there also.

The e-mail is koc@konaoutdoorcircle.org and the new website is www.konaoutdoorcircle.org

The KOC Annual Meeting and High Tea is coming up on June 11 in the afternoon. Please make sure this is on your calendars. Ellen Currens is the KOC contact for the Nominating Committee to fill KOC Board of Directors with vibrant and interesting members for 2010-2011. Messages can be left for her on 331-2426 or if you want to serve or have a suggestion for a new board member.

Our new part- time office manager is BreeLyn DuPertuis and she can be reached at 331.2426. She is a contract employee, will not have regular office hours, but messages can be left at that number and she will return the calls.

In this transition time, Kona Outdoor Circle has, at the request of the Foundation, terminated the relationship with Veronica Belshaw and has hired DuPertuis as part-time staff for the Kona Outdoor Circle organization. DuPertuis was been working as KOC’s Tropical Gardening Education Director and has been conducting very successful classes for the organization since then.

DuPertuis graduated from high school in Sacramento, California and embarked upon a ten-year period of travel and education. This included almost too many exciting events to name but began with selling her sculptural art pieces to fund a trip for an archaeological dig of a Mayan ruin site in Belize; then training in performance art in Italy and a correspondence associate of arts degree from College of the Siskiyous in California; after this was three month adventure in New Zealand, which planted the seed to grow into a full-fledged farmer.

DuPertuis then went to Humboldt State University to study Natural Resource and Media Communication and Design and created frequent media presentations and designed media printed materials. She ended up writing her own major, Environmental Interpretation and Environmentally Appropriate Technologies, a major that is now available to all Humboldt State students.

Then to the United Kingdom working for the Centre of Alternative technologies in Wales, a job which disappeared soon after she arrived and she found herself working as a chef in a five- star kitchen. Then three months at an organic goat farm in France and that ended in settling down and buying a farm in Honaunau to raise organic foods, be a vendor every Saturday at Keauhou Farmers Market where she found the Kona Outdoor Circle and their mission of keeping Kona Clean Green and Beautiful merged with hers.

The Kona Outdoor Circle is very glad to welcome DuPertuis in her new role and looking forward to using her skills to better deliver the message of the organization to our community.

Mahalo from the dedicated Board and Staff of the Kona Outdoor Circle