Hi Friends,

I am pleased to let you know that I joined the Board of Kijana Educational Empowerment Initiative earlier this year and I need your help. This is an organization that I have been involved with since high school and even connected in a sense since middle school.

Kijana was founded by one of my high school social studies teachers, Jim Cummings, and is changing the lives of multitudes of young people in Kenya and in the United States. I was impacted in middle school when Jim organized for a Kenyan friend of his and fellow teacher, Mr. Kutai, to visit The Benjamin School and collaborate in teaching for a month. Mr. Kutai visited my class and shared his experiences and it added to my global knowledge and understanding.

Since 2019, Kijana has been building an amazing primary school in western Kenya, the Kijana Global Innovation School. I hope to visit in the near future with my family. Jim and his wife, Ebby, opened the school in January 2020, after breaking ground in October 2019. They opened with 15 students and today have 183 students learning in the beautiful and unique school.

Just this year, they built a new two-story Junior Secondary building that includes 3 large classrooms, a temporary library and a super large multi-purpose room that presently serves as a science laboratory. While they have mostly finished it, and installed smartboards, and science equipment and furniture and beautiful murals and much more, it still needs painting and more finishing touches.

Additionally, Kijana has a very unique exploratory environmental program called, "Care, Share and Explore," in which they take students out on expeditions to game parks and rainforests and islands to learn about the environment and develop a love of nature and the world around us. They also take students on short journeys into the environment near the school. And in quite extraordinary fashion, Kijana has reached out to neighboring public schools and sponsored students from those schools to participate in the experiences. I don't know of any private school in the US that invites nearby public school students to join them in experiences like this.

Kijana even won an Anthem Award this year for the "Care, Share and Explore" program.

We have also been planning and fundraising to construct a unique, world-class library, media center and amphitheater at the school. It is designed collaboratively with two award-winning New York architects, Harpreet Dhaliwal (who was also a student of Jim's in Wisconsin), and her husband, Chris Dameron, and a Kenyan architect, Jeremiah Awori. Harpreet and Chris have been over to Kenya and Jeremiah has been to the United States to work together on the endeavor.

Kijana is a very small, yet extrardinarily highly impactful, non-profit, built over two-decades by Jim and many others.

We have many immediate needs, including painting the new Junior Secondary building, acquiring more musical instruments, adding to the funding for the exploratory expeditions, and funding the new upcoming library, media center and amphitheater.

Please join me in strengthening Kijana as I begin my service as a Kijana Educational Empowerment Initiative board member.

I have a goal of $5,000 for now. Please help me reach my goal by November 15th so Kijana can keep investing in our global youth with strength into the year end and beyond.

Please see our website, www.kijana.org to learn more and see more photos of the amazing school and fortunate students.

With much gratitude,

Ali

Registration #: CH15773 (State of Florida Division of Consumer Services)

“A COPY OF THE OFFICIAL REGISTRATION AND FINANCIAL INFORMATION MAY BE OBTAINED FROM THE DIVISION OF CONSUMER SERVICES BY CALLING TOLL-FREE (800-435-7352) WITHIN THE STATE. REGISTRATION DOES NOT IMPLY ENDORSEMENT, APPROVAL, OR RECOMMENDATION BY THE STATE.”

Alexandra Sexton-Milligan Joins the Kijana Board of Directors.

Celebrate by helping me raise funds for the Kijana Global Innovation School.