The view from above Mokauea Island, just off Sand Island, reveals a treasure of history: one of the last ancient Hawaiian fishponds.

But paddlers and boaters who pass that way on a regular basis often don't always know that. What they see from the water is an islet littered with broken glass and unsightly flotsam, overgrown with kiawe, mangrove and pickleweed.

That's about to change as one of the dozen-plus projects scheduled for Make a Difference Day gets under way tomorrow. The 17th annual Make a Difference Day is sponsored by USA Weekend and Points of Light & Hands On Network.

Volunteers in Hawai'i will be among the millions of people nationwide lending a hand to make the world a better place. And at Mokauea Island, Laurie Komeiji hopes volunteers number in the hundreds.

Komeiji, who paddles for the New Hope Canoe Club, came up with the idea of helping to clear the beach of the islet — educating the public about the fishpond in the process — after learning more about it from Donna Kahakui, founder of the Kai Makana organization, which maintains the site.

"We'd go by there every day," Komeiji said. "Almost everybody did not know it was located there, and holds the oldest canoe in state. It's such a wonderful resource, but so littered. All the trash dumped into the waters ends up there."

Her canoe club will shuttle over volunteers who will be put to work at several stations geared to volunteers' physical abilities: chopping, cleanup patrol, etc. They'll be expected to work a couple of hours, then offered lunch and water.

Part of the project is to educate participants, too.

"I don't want it to just be a Make a Difference day," Komeiji said, with emphasis on the last word. "I want them to be educated about something, so people can commit to making a change. The next time they're at the beach, they're going to throw a plastic water bottle away, not leave it on the beach."

One of the things that ocean and beach users may not realize is that material dumped in one place can end up despoiling a distant site. Mokauea Island, for example, is littered with discarded bicycle parts. "There's no bicycle paths on that little island, but so many bike frames and tires, which landed because of the current," Komeiji said.

Check out the Mokauea cleanup and other O'ahu projects — for example, a Farrington campus beautification, a marsh cleanup and service dog facility restorations — on the DAYtaBANK, found at www.makeadifferenceday.com. Information about signing up for a Make a Difference Day project is available at the Web site.